Film Stories: Tippett Studios | In the wake of its closure, a digital archive of animated materials appears online. “August brought with it the sad news that Tippett Studios, the Berkeley-based animation and effects house founded by Phil Tippett, was closing down. The company had been in financial trouble for a while, and as it closed its doors on the 28th of that month, decades of props, memorabilia and art was sold off in a two-day auction….An anonymous person was at the auction in August, spotted a folder of CD-ROMs and other discs, and managed to acquire it for an undisclosed sum. Rather than keep the contents of those discs to themselves, that person has now uploaded it all to the Internet Archive.”

EVENTS

Accessible Web Design: WordPress Accessibility Day: 2026. “The first WordPress Accessibility Day was 6 years ago today. It started at 17:45 UTC on October 2nd, 2020, when I gave the opening remarks. It certainly took a very different path than the one towards the 2026 edition, which starts in just a few days, on October 7th.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Associated Press: ‘Jane Doe’ solidarity posts flood social media after Cornell rape lawsuit. “It was one woman, then another, and another, until a trickle became a flood. Countless women, and some men, posting on social media that they were Jane Doe, in support of a young woman using that name to file a lawsuit against Cornell University and seven fraternity members she accuses of raping her.”

New York Times: After Outcry, Monitors the Trump Administration Tried to Scrap Return to Sea. “Under pressure from Congress, a network of ocean monitors that provides vital data to meteorologists, climate scientists, oceanographers and the fishing industry is being restored.”

USEFUL STUFF

Lifehacker: 15 Hacks Every Opera Browser User Should Know. “… the browser still retains its core philosophy of shipping useful integrated features—even if those options aren’t always obvious. From bypassing unskippable YouTube ads to using a built-in volume booster for every tab, here are the best Opera hacks you should know about.”

AROUND THE SEARCH & SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Asahi Shimbun: Japan’s digital libraries still on the rise after pandemic boom. “Japan’s public libraries are quietly undergoing a digital transformation. In just six years, the number of local governments offering e-book lending services has increased sevenfold, reaching 613 prefectures and municipalities and giving more than 70 percent of the population round-the-clock access to literature.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Reuters: Dutch eyewear chain Hans Anders halts sale of Meta glasses, citing privacy concerns. “One of the largest Dutch eyewear retail chains said on Friday it had suspended sales of Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses in the Netherlands ​and Belgium amid growing privacy concerns, in one of the first such ‌moves by a retailer.”

VT Digger: Hackers demand ransom from Slate Valley school district after compromising teachers’ personal data. “Hackers are demanding hundreds of thousands of dollars in ransom from the Slate Valley Unified School District after hacking a district server last month and compromising teachers’ personal information, according to Superintendent Brooke Olsen-Farrell.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Association of Science and Technology Centers: New Initiative to Examine How Museums Engage the Communities They Serve. “The Association of Science and Technology Centers, Garibay Group, and the Association of Children’s Museums, with support from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (Award MG-255854-OMS-24), today announced the launch of Museums Serving All People, a new initiative to study how museums build and sustain public engagement, and embed organizational values in programs, exhibits, events, and partnerships, as well as internal policies and practices.”

West Point: Polish team travels to West Point to digitally preserve Tadeusz Kościuszko’s Revolutionary War legacy. “Nearly 250 years after Tadeusz Kościuszko helped shape the defenses of West Point, a team from his native Poland is using 3D scanning, aerial photography and other digital technology to preserve the physical traces of his legacy for future generations. Three members of Poland’s Foundation for the Virtualization of National Cultural Heritage traveled approximately 4,200 miles to the U.S. Military Academy from Sept. 14-29 to digitally document Revolutionary War-era sites and artifacts associated with the Polish-American hero.” 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.

Kosmo Foto: PPP Cameras unveils new website aiming to list every film camera ever made. “PPP Cameras’ Pierro Pozella has unveiled a momentous project – a free-to-access website which intends to list every film camera ever made. The site, called Camera Index, has already launched with more than 1,400 cameras made by manufacturers with the letter ‘A’, including Agfa, Ansco, Alpa and Argus.”

Found on Reddit: a giant dataset at placedb. From the countries list: “255 countries and territories. 4,314 states, provinces and other first-level divisions. 1,671,395 cities and towns, every one with latitude and longitude. Free to download as JSON, in the public domain, with no API key.”

KTLA: CAL FIRE launches new app for real-time wildfire, emergency information. “CAL FIRE has launched a new mobile platform designed to give Californians real-time information about wildfires and other emergencies directly from public safety agencies. The new platform, called AwareCA, was announced Thursday by CAL FIRE Chief Joe Tyler, who said the agency’s website received 100 million views in 2025, with a majority of visitors seeking information about wildfires.”

EVENTS

Publishers Weekly: Libro.fm, Silent Book Club Plan Banned Books Week Read-In. “From October 4–10, Libro.fm and Silent Book Club are urging audiophiles to join a Banned Books Week Read-In. More than 400 bookstores, libraries, and SBC chapters will host a social event for readers who enjoy talking to strangers as much as donning headphones and retreating into a story.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

DigitalNC: Follow the Trail of the Bookmobile in New Issues of The Yadkin Ripple!. “These newest issues date from 1941 through 1964, though DigitalNC has issues of The Yadkin Ripple from as early as 1893! Since its founding in 1892 by Mattie Johnson Hall, The Yadkin Ripple has always covered a mix of national and local news for its readership across Yadkin County.”

AROUND THE SEARCH & SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Search Engine Journal: Google Tells Sites To Fact-Check AI Content Before Publishing. Blinking confused man meme .gif “Google’s guidance on AI-generated content now says to fact-check it by hand before publishing, and the review extends to titles, alt text, and other metadata.”

Mississippi Today: Grant will expand Fannie Lou Hamer Digital Driving Tour. “The Jonathan Logan Family Foundation awarded $25,000 to the ‘Fannie Lou Hamer’s America’ project to support research and the production of 12 new tour stops and multimedia resources, highlighting historic locations connected to Hamer’s grassroots organizing, voting rights work, civic participation, food justice and community empowerment.”

Maps Mania: Map Pac-Man is Back!. “On April Fool’s Day 2015, a button was added to Google Maps which, when selected, turned the streets of the current map view into a fully functioning game of Pac-Man. Players could navigate the familiar streets, eating dots and avoiding ghosts just as they would in the classic arcade game. Pac-Man on Map is a tribute to that much-missed April Fool’s Day feature. The game similarly transforms real-world streets into a playable Pac-Man maze, using road data to generate a layout wherever you choose to play.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

The Register: Teen suspected of running KillSec ransomware group as cops seize servers, arrest three. “Police suspect a 16-year-old was the main operator of KillSec, a ransomware group linked to around 1,000 suspected attacks worldwide. Authorities announced on Thursday that an international operation had seized the group’s infrastructure and made three provisional arrests. The German-led Operation KillSwitch replaced the crew’s leak site with a police seizure notice.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

American Alliance of Museums: Inclusive Content in Uncertain Times: A 2026 Annual Survey of Museum-Goers Data Story. “Last year, we asked whether all that political pressure on DEAI reflects a shift in public opinion. The short answer is still no. The majority of US adults, and the majority of museum-goers, support and want museums to share inclusive content. This has not changed. What has changed is the political environment.”

Mellon Foundation: Mellon Foundation Releases the First National Study of Community-Based Archives. “Today, the Mellon Foundation released ‘Powerful but Precarious: Mapping the Landscape of Community-Based Archives,’ the first national study of its kind. Produced in partnership with research firm Engage R+D, the study draws on a survey of 336 independent, community-led archives, and in-depth interviews with more than 20 practitioners across the country.”

Pew (PEW PEW PEW PEW PEW!): Across the Globe, People Increasingly Say Social Media Is Harming Democracy. “A new 37-nation Pew Research Center survey finds that in most countries where trend data is available, the share of the public who believes social media is bad for democracy has increased significantly from 2022 or 2023 to now.” 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.

State of Maine: Maine State Archives offers expanded digital access with Open Access. “Secretary of State Shenna Bellows today announced the official launch of Open Access, the Maine State Archives (MSA) new online platform for publicly accessible, digitized and born-digital public records. The platform can be accessed at https://digitalarchives.maine.gov or from the Maine State Archives section of the Secretary of State website.”

Hackaday: Archiving The World’s Oldest Webcam Feed. “FogCam is the oldest webcam feed that’s still up and running. Installed at San Francisco State University, it’s been slowly uploading a new image to the web every 20 to 60 seconds or so since September 30, 1994. Very few of those images have ever been saved, but [Justin Earl] has come along to fix that with Fog-Bank.” I recommend against reading the comments.

EVENTS

National Agricultural Law Center: UADA news release: Who controls your farm data? NALC webinar examines emerging state laws. “The webinar, titled ‘Agricultural Data Rights: A New State Law Landscape,’ will examine how new state laws are addressing agricultural data ownership and monetization rights among various participants in the agricultural technology creation and usage chain. The one-hour, online event will begin at 11 a.m. CDT on Wednesday, Oct. 21. It is free and open to the public.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

TechSpot: A hack of Pentagon personnel data went undetected for nine months, exposing 3 million people. “The Pentagon’s personnel data system was accessed for roughly nine months before officials discovered and patched the vulnerability, which exposed personally identifiable information tied to more than 3 million people. It contained a particularly sensitive combination of data: Social Security numbers and information about the jobs held by military and civilian personnel – a pairing that raises risks beyond conventional identity theft.”

Search Engine Roundtable: Google Tests Dropping I’m Feeling Lucky Button From Search Bar. “Google seems to be testing dropping the historic I’m Feeling Lucky button for the main Google Search bar. It is totally gone for some searchers when you start to type your query, and in other cases, it is supplemented with AI buttons.”

AROUND THE SEARCH & SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

State of Delaware: Delaware Public Archives Celebrates American Archives Month!. “The Delaware Public Archives is excited to announce that virtual reference appointments with archivists are now available on Thursdays at 10:00 a.m., 2:00 p.m., and 3:00 p.m. These virtual appointments are 30 minutes long and take place via Microsoft Teams. During the session, the reference archivist will suggest where to begin your research and provide an overview of digital materials available on the Delaware Public Archives Portal and website.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

The Register: UK rail cops’ £320K face-scanning spree nets zero matches. “British Transport Police (BTP) spent more than £320,000 putting half a million commuters through live facial recognition cameras, only for the system to identify precisely nobody it was looking for.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Arch Daily: A New Lens on Modern Heritage: ArchDaily Partners with World Monuments Fund. “WMF brings on-the-ground conservation expertise across the world, and ArchDaily brings the editorial capacity to contextualize that work and connect it to a global audience. The goal is to do both at once: preserve places and tell their stories, shaping how modernist heritage is understood far beyond the field of preservation itself.”

Jeff Johnson: I’m leaving Reddit because of RSS. “The most ridiculous part of Reddit’s announcement was the suggestion that subreddit moderators replace RSS feeds with Discord notifications. What perversity, insanity to recommend a competing social network as the only practical way to use yours! I’m also skeptical of Reddit’s public excuse for dropping RSS: bot scraping. As I noted back in June, Reddit is already rate-limiting RSS feeds. If the current limits are insufficient, why not impose stricter limits?”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

PetaPixel: 18 Adorable Winners From the Dog Photography Awards. “Picked from 1,900 entries across 50 countries, Katie Brockman from the United States took home the title of Dog Photographer of the Year for her thoughtful portrait of a pit bull.” 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.

Tom’s Hardware: Google freezes open-source bug bounty program amid flood of invalid AI slop submissions — product flaw submissions halted until 2027 as maintainers drown in hallucinations. “Google has officially suspended product vulnerability submissions to its Open Source Software Vulnerability Reward Program (OSS VRP) — a bug bounty program — over an influx of invalid AI-driven reports. The company, in an official X post on October 1, encouraged participants to explore other VRP programs and committed to providing an update by the first quarter of 2027, while it reformats and works on this aspect of the program in the meantime.”

DATA CENTERS

New York Times: How Meta Uses A.I. Data Centers to Avoid Billions in Federal Taxes. “Here’s what Meta is doing: For tax purposes, the company classifies its enormous, multibillion-dollar data centers as ‘pilot models.’ Under a tax credit created in the 1980s to spur innovation, companies can get a rebate for supplies, but only if they are being tested in an experimental effort, not standard business operations. Meta is claiming that the costly A.I. computer chips it buys from companies, including Nvidia, are entitled to a taxpayer-provided discount as part of the experiment. The move caused some unease within Meta’s finance department.”

Futurism: Microsoft Shrivels When Asked If Its “Good Neighbor” Data Center Policy Will Involve Actually Supporting Community Groups. “As Ars Technica reported, the group We Make Indiana — a coalition of 25 various interfaith groups, law enforcement associations, mental health organizations, and other non-profits — quickly ran up against the limits of Microsoft’s altruism after approaching a company liason to raise revenue for community services.”

AI IN EDUCATION

ProPublica: How Texas Helped a Private School Chain’s AI Tool Get Into Public School Classrooms. “Just three months after the Texas State Board of Education raised concerns about Alpha School’s AI learning platform, Education Commissioner Mike Morath was in talks about using the tool in public schools.”

AI IN GOVERNANCE

Associated Press: Wes Moore forms bipartisan governors group on AI, citing federal inaction. “Gov. Wes Moore of Maryland is forming a bipartisan group of governors to respond to mounting concerns about the threats posed by artificial intelligence as he argued that states need to fill a void left by the federal government’s inaction on the issue.”

The Bulwark: RFK Jr. Wants to AI-ify Health Care. Claude Says He’s Full of Sh*t.. “INSPIRED BY HIS CALL TO USE AI, I went ahead and asked Claude (Anthropic’s AI assistant) to analyze some of Kennedy’s more memorable statements. I used the professional, paid version, because it provides access to more capable AI models that can produce more accurate results, and I started with one of Kennedy’s favorite claims: that the scientific community hasn’t seriously investigated links between vaccines and autism.”

AI LEGISLATION

Politico: New Mexico to jump into frontier AI regulation. “New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez is slated to propose a state framework to regulate frontier artificial intelligence, pushing the state toward reining in the cutting edge of the fast-developing technology.”

AI IN WORK

Poynter: AI learned how to write from humans. Now humans are trying not to sound like AI.. “Artificial intelligence is making editors do strange things, like second-guess skills built over entire careers or blanch at the sight of punctuation marks. This manifested at the recent ACES: The Society for Editing’s virtual conference.”

Los Angeles Times: An AI radio DJ has shot to stardom in LA Human hosts aren’t happy about it. “GeeGee is Geraldine Guzman. Her popular partner is Coyotec — an artificial intelligence bot programmed to mimic a radio repartee. Working with a large language model has been rewarding but unpredictable, Guzman says. Coyotec comes up with unexpected takes on topics and sometimes has to be told to stop swearing.”

AROUND THE AI WORLD

Karl Bode: Meta’s Latest AI Product Is A Terrifying And Hilarious Mess. “Meta claimed repeatedly that their new Muse agent was built with a heavy focus on privacy and security. But this is Meta, a soggy ad monopoly run by an unfireable authoritarian-friendly manbaby with a long history of making positively terrible choices, so things very quickly got out of control. Right out of the gate, Muse launched with a nasty zero-day flaw that created a backdoor on Mac computers, allowing a hacker to not only gain total control of the Muse AI client, but surveil you without your knowledge.”

Engadget: OpenAI adds $500(!) Pro subscription, nerfs its existing $200 tier . “Announced during the company’s DevDay event today, OpenAI’s new Pro 500 plan offers OpenAI’s highest usage allowance and comes with access to its new ‘Ultrafast’ feature — it also costs $500 per month. At the end of 2024, OpenAI became the first AI lab to introduce a $200 Pro plan. Nearly every other provider, including Anthropic and Perplexity, later announced their own $200 tiers, so it’s possible other competitors will follow suit.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

BBC: Chinese AI tool told researchers how to make bioweapons. “Chinese AI developer Moonshot is conducting an internal review after researchers were able to persuade two of its popular Kimi models to tell them how to make biological weapons and carry out assassinations.”

Florida Phoenix: Florida AG files to block ChatGPT development and place restrictions on OpenAI. “Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier filed Monday for a temporary injunction against OpenAI and Chat GPT, upping his legal challenge against the artificial intelligence company that he says has admitted it can’t regulate its own technology. The 39-page motion asks the court to temporarily prohibit OpenAI from developing new artificial intelligence models without independent third-party safeguards and approval.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

University of Cambridge: AI tool for mapping smallholder crops proves itself in Senegal. “Researchers used Cambridge’s Tessera, an open-source AI model trained on satellite images, to map crops in Senegal’s groundnut basin. They found that Tessera was more accurate than current methods, getting the right result 84% of the time in tests while using only a fraction of computational resources and pre-labelled data. In one scenario, it performed 28% better than the next-best model.”

Gizmodo: This AI Can Estimate How Long You’ve Been Dead. How It Works Is the Weird Part. “In a study published Monday in Nature Communications, researchers developed an AI system that uses microbes on cadavers to estimate their postmortem intervals (PMI), or time since death. The system, called mHolmes, was trained on public data from 34 human cadavers. While further work is needed, it could one day greatly improve forensic investigations.” 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.

Capital & Main: New ‘Oligarch Index’ Tracks California’s Biggest Political Spenders. “As the California Oligarch Index makes clear, a relatively tiny number of wealthy donors and corporations are exerting profound influence over who gets elected and which laws get passed in the Golden State.”

Ka Wai Ola: The Oʻahu Cemetery Project Preserved on Papakilo. “In 1986, Nanette Napoleon surveyed gravesites across 46 Oʻahu cemeteries, documenting the information recorded on tombstones and grave markers. These cemeteries were selected because they had no publicly accessible burial records at the time….The digitization of the Oʻahu Cemetery Project was a three-year endeavor that took a dozen Hawaiian Historical Society staff, volunteers, and interns to complete.”

EVENTS

EFF: Happy Opt Out October! Let’s Find Real Alternatives to the Tech Giants. “Last year, we created Opt Out October to help remind ourselves of the variety of ways we can take back control of our data through small steps inside apps, operating systems, and other various forms. This year, we highlight the idea that sometimes the best way to control your data is to leave a platform, app, or operating system altogether. To do so, we’ve created a hub of resources sharing ways to find new software that isn’t made by the tech giants, take advantage of the growing universe of new social media options, install a whole new operating system, and better control how various popular tools and software use your data for AI training.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Ars Technica: Reddit is putting more limits on Old.Reddit.com. “Soon, Reddit won’t let people use Old.Reddit.com unless they have used the site while logged in within the previous six months. In July, Reddit started requiring that users be logged in to access Old Reddit. This new requirement is an effort to reduce Reddit’s biggest source of scraping and automated traffic, the company says.”

The Register: Canonical begins pushing Resolute Raccoon. “Resolute Raccoon is ready to roll out to existing Ubuntu users. Canonical has flipped the switch, and users on 24.04 will start to get offered 26.04.1. Canonical has marked the occasion with an official announcement that it’s time to upgrade your desktop.”

AROUND THE SEARCH & SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Search Engine Roundtable: Google Maps Now Requires Sign In To Read All Reviews & More. “Google Maps now requires you to sign in to a Google account to see all the reviews on a Google Business Profile listing. It is also required in order to sort the reviews, leave a review, and more. I assume this was done to help prevent AI, bots, and third parties from scraping the Google reviews.”

Benin Web TV: Benin: National Library prepares digital library and strategic plan for 2027-2033. “The National Library of Benin is preparing several initiatives aimed at modernizing the management and access to documentary heritage. The institution is specifically working on a national digital library, a comprehensive national bibliography, a statistical platform for the book chain, and a strategic plan covering the period from 2027 to 2033.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

UC Berkeley Journalism: Forbidden Stories and UC Berkeley Journalism join forces to launch a flagship, cross-border investigative lab and respond to mounting threats to press freedom in the U.S.. “The Forbidden Stories Lab based at the UC Berkeley School of Journalism will mobilize newsrooms across the United States and internationally to pursue and amplify public-interest investigations facing threats or attempts to silence them.”

NSA: NSA Launches 13th Annual Codebreaker Challenge. “The National Security Agency (NSA) officially announced the launch of its 13th Annual Codebreaker Challenge today, inviting college and university students across the United States to test their technical skills against a realistic, mission-centric cybersecurity scenario.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Kansas Reflector: Kansas Legislature’s budget cuts compel Fort Hays State University to close Sternberg Museum. “[Fort Hays State University president Tisa] Mason said in a 1,500-word statement that Fort Hays State received a $2.4 million reduction in state funding during the 2026 session. In addition, the Legislature requested FHSU assess how it would slash administrative costs by 10%. The university has relied for decades on revenue from higher education programs in China, but restrictions by the state could jeopardize as much as $6 million in funding.”

Australian Museum: Australian Museum partners with Warlpiri Project on community-led repatriation of sacred objects. “The Australian Museum (AM) has returned 17 culturally significant sacred objects to Warlpiri ownership, marking an important milestone in a community-led repatriation process built on research, cultural authority and partnership.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Bay Nature: People Are Sequencing Mushroom DNA at Home Now. “Today, the search for fungal answers has taken over [Harte] Singer’s life—and his garage in Santa Rosa, which he’s now converted into a full laboratory dedicated to fungal DNA. … He is completing a master’s degree in mycology at California State University East Bay, runs his own fungal DNA sequencing business, and leads sequencing for the California Fungal Diversity Survey (CA FUNDIS)—a community science project that aims to collect, preserve, and sequence as much of the state’s dizzying fungal diversity as possible.” 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.

Charles F Kettering Foundation: In the Moment: Oral History as a Democratic Resource. “…the Kettering Foundation’s Democracy and the Arts focus area is partnering with OurStoryBridge to create the Democracy & the Arts oral history collection. These stories are from people experiencing challenges imposed by current efforts to limit free speech and creative expression in the arts and humanities. This collection is part of the broader OurStoryBridgeListens: Present in the Moment initiative that documents how Americans are experiencing democracy through their own voices.”

Paris Secret: This free website lets you see what your Parisian neighborhood looked like in 1970. “A street filled with cars, a storefront that no longer exists, a construction site at the base of a building, or simply Parisians pausing in front of a café. The Paris 1970 website offers a fascinating glimpse into the capital as it was more than half a century ago, featuring tens of thousands of photographs taken throughout the city.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Block Club Chicago: Padilla, Schiff, Durbin, Duckworth Introduce Legislation to Protect Regional National Archives Facilities from Closure. “Today, U.S. Senators Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff (both D-Calif.), Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), and Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), introduced the National Archives Protection Act, legislation that would require congressional approval before the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) can close or significantly restrict access to existing regional facilities.”

State of Hawaii: NEWS RELEASE: DBEDT Releases 2025 State of Hawai’i Data Book. “The Hawaiʻi State Data Book remains the state’s most comprehensive statistical resource, featuring 24 sections and 832 data tables covering population, education, environment, economics, energy, real estate, construction, business enterprises, government, tourism and transportation.”

USEFUL STUFF

K-Comics Beat: A comprehensive list to picking your webcomic or webnovel’s home.. “This is a list of various sites you can host your webcomic or webnovel, in no particular order. It is organized into four main categories: Comic hosting sites, Site builders, blog sites that can be repurposed or have support for webcomics and webnovels, and webcomic rings and databases. I will also mention whether these platforms do have support for mature/NSFW content, as well as if these platforms utilize AI in some form, since these are variables many creatives consider for their projects.” I’m not very familiar with this space so I can’t tell you whether this article is comprehensive, but it IS extensive.

AROUND THE SEARCH & SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

NBC Chicago: Social media influencer Brooke Eby dies at 37 after battle with ALS. “Eby created a community on TikTok — gathering hundreds of thousands of followers — with the goal of helping to change how others understand ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. On Thursday, she died from complications of ALS at the age of 37, according to the ALS Network.”

Gizmodo: Wikipedia Fans Worry the Site Is Getting a Bad Deal From Its Streetwear Brand Collab. “Fans, definitionally, tend to like it when their favs get tapped for fun, trendy projects. But when the object of your fandom is a notoriously cash-strapped online resource, one can’t help but paternalistically try to see the fine print on the deal—like the recently announced one between Wikipedia and the streetwear brand Online Ceramics—before celebrations begin.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Gothamist: Fake QR codes on Manhattan parking meters lead to identity theft charges. “Mihai Theodor Enescu was arraigned in Manhattan Supreme Court on five counts of second-degree identity theft and six counts of second-degree criminal impersonation, court records show. Prosecutors allege he was behind the phony city payment website linked from the QR code stickers, which asked users for credit card information.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

New York Times: Librarians on Libraries. “We spoke with dozens of librarians at the A.L.A. conference this summer in Chicago. They came from rural towns and major cities, elementary schools and universities, local branches and big government agencies. These librarians want you to know that they don’t sit around reading all day. They want you to know about book bans and budget cuts, but also about career counseling and crafting groups and pop-up medical clinics.”

Disciples of Christ Historical Society: DCHS Awarded $5400 Digitization Grant. “We are pleased to announce that the JSTOR Digital Collections Initiative awarded the Disciples of Christ Historical Society a $5400 digitization grant. The grant, made possible by a JSTOR and Mellon Foundation partnership, aims to help JSTOR Digital Stewardship Charter Program members make more digitized archival and special collections materials available to researchers.” Good evening, 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.

Alaska Beacon: Misleading Google AI instructions cause Kodiak woman to be cited for illegal snipe hunt. “Incorrect information provided by a Google AI overview caused a Kodiak woman to hunt snipe illegally on Sept. 5, according to a citation filed this week at the Kodiak district court. Writing in an affidavit attached to the citation, Alaska Wildlife Trooper Alex Wick said [Christina] Weaver called troopers to self-report the violation.”

ANTI-AI SENTIMENT

Ars Technica: Protests against OpenAI get increasingly creative. “Two artists from a Bay Area studio unveiled What Iceberg?, a table-sized installation placed at the public entrance to an OpenAI developer event in San Francisco on Tuesday. According to a description of the piece, the 5-foot-tall sculpture ‘shows OpenAI’s leaders and investors escaping a sinking ship with unimaginable wealth, while everyone else is left to face the cost of AI.'”

DATA CENTERS

Associated Press: Amazon to invest $1B into data center communities amid backlash against data center rollouts. “Amazon is investing more than $1 billion over the next five years into communities where it operates data centers for education, job training, water and energy preservation projects and other local priorities as it reacts to a growing backlash from politicians and consumers to the tech industry’s rollout of the massive buildings.”

AI IN GOVERNANCE

ANSA English: Siracusano to sue Vannacci over AI-manipulated revealing photo. “Relations with Parliament Undersecretary Matilde Siracusano said Monday that she intends to take legal action against general-turned-politician Roberto Vannacci over an AI-manipulated image of her with a revealing neckline that he posted on social media.”

BBC: Trump’s AI rebrand causes ‘unprecedented’ demand for Slovenian website names. “Register.si spokeswoman Klara Herman said 44,000 web addresses with the .si suffix had been registered in September, compared to less than 2,000 in August – an increase of more than 2,100%. She said the scale of activity in late September was ‘unprecedented’ compared to the previous 12 months.”

Arkansas Times: Mississippi River mayors, including three in Arkansas, propose AI data center guardrails. “There are already more than 3,000 active data centers throughout the United States, including in Minnesota, Iowa, Illinois, Missouri and Tennessee. As the need for artificial intelligence and data storage grows, more cities and counties are being approached by companies interested in building data centers in their communities.”

AI LEGISLATION

CT Mirror: New CT AI, data privacy laws go into effect Oct. 1. What to know. “The legislation, also known as the Connecticut Artificial Intelligence Responsibility and Transparency, or CART, Act, was result of a long-sought compromise between lawmakers in the state Senate, House and governor’s office. While some of CART Act’s provisions went into effect already, some will become law starting Oct. 1.”

AI IN WORK

The Globe and Mail: AI fabrication suspected of writing dozens of articles in Canadian publications. “The explosive e-mail landed in llker Sezer’s inbox just after 9 p.m. on Sept. 2 with the subject line ‘Investigative feature submission. Canada-based criminal network with a Turkey trail.’ The story sounded like a huge scoop for Mr. Sezer and his staff of 30 journalists at Türkiye Today, an English-language news website based in Istanbul.

Gizmodo: Meta Goes All-In On AI for Businesses Before Muse Goes Horribly Wrong. “Meta is on a mission ‘to bring personal superintelligence to everyone,’ as CEO Mark Zuckerberg put it last year. We got our first glimpse of what that vision looks like earlier this month: a deceptively cutesy, Tamagotchi-like personal AI agent called Muse. On Monday, the company announced it’s also bringing its superintelligence ambitions to the all-important enterprise market with the launch of a new internal business unit.”

Poynter: AI learned how to write from humans. Now humans are trying not to sound like AI.. “Artificial intelligence is making editors do strange things, like second-guess skills built over entire careers or blanch at the sight of punctuation marks.”

AROUND THE AI WORLD

Reuters: China fuels rush to turn AI video into an industry. “When Zhu Zhili was looking for a base to set up an artificial intelligence film studio in China two years ago, there was just one clear choice: the southern city ​of Shenzhen with its vast tech ecosystem. This year, AI filmmaker Zhu said he has fielded calls from officials in cities and industrial parks across China, all with the same pitch: ‌bring your AI film business here.”

Futurism: People Who Drink Their Own Pee Are Obsessed With AI, Using It to Reassure Themselves That It’s a Miraculous Cure-All. “despite some initial hurdles, acolytes of the urine drinking lifestyle have found it remarkably easy to break through chatbot safeguards — engineering AI to say whatever it is they wanted to hear to begin with, essentially. The bypass, it seems, involves simply mentioning the word ‘esoteric.'”

SECURITY & LEGAL

New York Times: OpenAI Ignored Employees Who Warned It Wasn’t Doing Enough About Security. “In emails, the employees said they worried that OpenAI’s newest artificial intelligence models were not being appropriately monitored during testing to gauge the technology’s sophistication and to secure the models, according to messages viewed by The New York Times. In response, OpenAI executives told the employees that the tests needed to move forward as quickly as possible to release the A.I. models on time. No additional security protocols were instituted, said the workers, who were not authorized to speak publicly on sensitive matters.”

AFP: Rogue OpenAI agents covered up their tracks, report says. “Artificial intelligence agents developed by OpenAI tried to erase traces of their activity after gaining unauthorized access to government websites, according to a report published Thursday. Cybersecurity firm Asymmetric Security analyzed the activity of the agents — AI programs capable of acting autonomously — which targeted Australian government websites and other public bodies between March and September.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Pew (PEW PEW PEW PEW PEW PEW!): How Pew Research Center is – and is not – using AI in our work. “As public-facing social scientists committed to innovation, we’re exploring what AI might add to our toolkit. As public opinion researchers, we’re studying and explaining how people are reacting to the advance of AI technologies. And as information providers whose fundamental values include accuracy and methodological rigor, we’re moving with great deliberation to ensure the quality of our work remains high. In all of these spaces, our primary commitment is that our work remains people-centered.” Good evening, 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.

Prague Morning: The Prague Post’s First Issue Goes Online 35 Years Later. “The newly launched archive begins with that very first issue, which is available to read in full, browse online and search by text. A new issue will be added each week, corresponding to the same week 35 years earlier. The project will allow readers to follow the political, social and cultural changes of the early 1990s through the newspaper’s coverage, much as readers did at the time.”

The Guardian: Corporations claim their fossil fuel emissions are a drop in the ocean. But what if we could count the real cost?. “The tool can be used to estimate the impact of carbon dioxide emissions from any project, company or state – or for any known amount of emissions – across eight different factors including the loss of labour hours due to excess heat, the loss of glaciers, the death of corals or lost food production.”

9to5 Mac: This website lets you explore nearly 30 years of Apple product colors. “From the original Bondi Blue iMac to the Burgundy iPhone 18 Pro Max, the website lists ‘every bright, colourful thing Apple has ever sold, in one glorious pile,’ complete with each product’s release year and official Apple color name (or number, in some cases).”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Search Engine Journal: YouTube To Cut Reach Of Channels Reposting Barely Changed Clips. “YouTube is updating recommendations to favor original Shorts and reduce reach for channels that mainly re-upload others’ clips without significant changes.” I think I’ve seen entire episodes of HOUSE thanks to YouTube Shorts.

Android Headlines: Search Engines Still Crush AI Chatbots in Global Web Traffic. “A study comparing June 2026 web traffic shows search engines generated 162.19 billion visits compared to 8.26 billion for AI chatbots, giving traditional search a 19.6-to-1 lead. While Google led all platforms with 98.19 billion visits and ChatGPT topped chatbots with 5.32 billion, search engines continue integrating AI features to maintain their dominance.”

USEFUL STUFF

MakeUseOf: 7 useful things you can do with QR codes you create yourself. “QR codes have a bit of an image problem. Most of the time, they show up on restaurant tables, boarding passes, posters, and product packaging, doing whatever job somebody else decided they should do. I started finding them a lot more interesting once I began making my own. They’re especially good at smoothing over those tiny recurring annoyances that usually involve retyping information, digging through an app, or walking someone through the same instructions again.”

AROUND THE SEARCH & SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

TRT World: Türkiye plans to digitally archive centuries-old Turkish music. “Türkiye is preparing a digital archive of centuries-old musical works, historical scores and performance recordings that will be made freely accessible to the public in 2027. The project, led by the Culture and Tourism Ministry’s General Directorate of Fine Arts, will bring together scores from the Seljuk and Ottoman periods, along with religious hymns, gazels, concert recordings and stage performances.”

Manx Radio: Concern as online access to digital newspaper archive to cease. The way local historians, and family researchers, access the digital collection of Isle of Man newspapers is soon to change. From 12 October online access to the database – which holds more than 150 years’ worth of archives – will cease.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Engadget: Florida county finds 11 unpermitted Flock cameras with unidentified owners . “After officials in Florida’s St. Lucie County opted to end use of Flock cameras and began removing them, they discovered several devices that were not connected to any local agencies. The Washington Post reported that the county leaders thought they had 52 cameras, but found 14 additional ones that were unaccounted for and unpermitted.”

NBC New York: New NYC ‘Click to Cancel’ rule starts Thursday: What all subscribers should know. “Starting Thursday, New York City is banning companies from using subscription traps and junk fees, ensuring New Yorkers can easily cancel automatic renewals and ongoing service offers. According to an estimate from the Roosevelt Institute, the initiative will save New Yorkers more than $160 million a year — so anyone with a subscription to anything may want to pay attention.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Washington University in St. Louis: WashU research finds gaps in Google AI Overview citations, claims. “A forthcoming paper, to be presented at the October 2026 ACM Internet Measurement Conference, offers the broadest independent audit of Google AI Overviews to date — examining AI Overview activation patterns, source selection, whether claims matched their sources and the potential impact on publishers’ advertising revenue.”

The Conversation: Attacks on cultural heritage are unfolding with authoritarian politics in the U.S. and beyond. “Trump’s attempts to dismantle, politicize and take over public institutions for arts and learning have been well documented. Such attacks on cultural heritage in the U.S. are not unique. In recent years, several governments have placed at risk the very heritage they are charged to protect.” 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.

From Université Laval and machine-translated from French: The Library has digitized seven ancient manuscripts written in Greek. “The Rare and Antiquarian Books section of the Laval University Library has just completed the digitization of the Alphonse Dain collection, named after the French philologist and paleographer whose personal library was sold to Laval University in 1965….The collection includes eight manuscripts written in Greek. One of them, however, was in very poor condition and could not be digitized. These works, written between the 11th and 19th centuries, are now accessible on Kalos, the Library’s digital collections platform.”

State of Hawaii: More than 1,000 Aloha Stadium Events Now Available Online Through Stadium Stars Digital Archive. “More than 1,000 videos from Aloha Stadium’s Stadium Stars collection are now available to stream online, marking a major milestone in the ongoing effort to preserve and share the stadium’s history. Since 1991, Stadium Stars has captured high school football, baseball and soccer games, graduations and other community events, preserving memories for generations of Hawaiʻi families, athletes and fans.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

KRQE: New Mexico attorney asks for $40B penalty against Meta in state case. “The State of New Mexico is asking a judge for the biggest penalty ever awarded in a court case in the United States to punish Facebook for lying to New Mexicans. The attorney for the State of New Mexico is calling for Facebook’s parent company Meta to pay up to $40 billion, after a jury found they willfully deceived customers.”

USEFUL STUFF

PC World: Want your photos to survive for decades? A digital archivist explains what to do. “…unlike books and physical photo albums, it’s by no means a given that digital files will still be there or accessible in 25, 50, or 100 years’ time, just as you can’t leave a photo album out on the balcony and expect it to be intact many years later. The moral of the story is this: You need to look after your digital assets. But how to do that in a way that’s sustainable in the long term isn’t always obvious. How do the experts who work on preserving all kinds of information for the future go about it, and do they have any advice for us mere mortals?”

AROUND THE SEARCH & SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

CybersecKyle: I Built Drift to Share Articles and Passages to Mastodon. “Sharing a passage from an article can mean copying the quote, opening Mastodon, finding the article again for its title and URL, and assembling the post by hand. I wanted to highlight the part worth sharing, click an extension icon, and have those pieces waiting in an editable draft. That is the workflow behind Drift — Share to Mastodon, my new Chrome extension.”

Tubefilter: TikTok wants creators to see green: Its latest fintech feature will pay them for brand deals within 30 days. “#FinTok is taking on a whole new meaning. With its ecom hub TikTok Shop expected to generate more than $100 billion in GMV this year alone, TikTok has been exploring how it can get even more cash flowing through its app.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Northeastern University: Your car is collecting more data about you than you think. “As part of the partnership with the nonprofit media group Consumer Reports, a group of privacy and cybersecurity professors at Northeastern tested 21 vehicles from 19 car brands to understand what data the automakers collect and share. From their investigation, which included testing the vehicles themselves and their accompanying mobile apps, the researchers found a number of those companies were sharing details such as Vehicle Identification Numbers (VIN), location data and email addresses.”

Courthouse News Service: X asks Ninth Circuit to revive data-scraping suit against hate speech monitor. ” Elon Musk’s X asked a Ninth Circuit panel Wednesday to reverse a lower court’s finding that the First Amendment protects a nonprofit hate speech monitor’s activity. Peter Patterson of Cooper & Kirk, representing X, told the panel the case was about invasion of privacy and the economic harm caused by the Center for Countering Digital Hate’s reports about content on X, not free speech.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

USGS: USGS Updates U.S. Critical Mineral Deposits. “The U.S. Geological Survey has released an updated database showing known U.S. deposits of 59 critical minerals needed to strengthen the American economy and protect national security.”

Startup Fortune: arXiv now limits every researcher to two paper submissions a month. “ArXiv capped every submitter to two papers per calendar month starting October 1, 2026, with a three-submission active ceiling, a direct response to a flood of AI-generated papers overwhelming its volunteer moderators. The move follows a May 2026 rule banning authors for a year over undisclosed AI-generated content, and critics like Nathan Lambert argue it will choke off legitimate research dissemination.” 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.

European Food Information Council: New database brings together 392 million food safety records to track changing risks across Europe. “Around 392 million results from decades of European food safety monitoring have been brought together in a publicly available database developed by researchers from the EU-funded HOLiFOOD project.”

Arctic Hub: New database gives a clearer picture of Greenland’s plant life. “Knowledge about Greenland’s plants has long been scattered across museums and collections around the world. Now, researchers have brought more than 177,000 plant records together into one database. The work has identified 753 vascular plant species and provides a new overview of where and when they have been recorded.”

University of Guadalajara: Virtual Library of the UdeG Two decades of bringing science closer to the university community. “La Virtual library from the Universidad de Guadalajara (UdeG) celebrates two decades of bringing together, organizing and disseminating knowledge with a new website more user-friendly and accessible to its users; a space that has undergone a profound transformation to achieve to bring together various repositories and platforms for consulting scientific and academic material.”

EVENTS

Digital Preservation Coalition: Digital Preservation Awards 2026: From the first nominations to the night in Warsaw. “Back in March, when we invited the global digital preservation community to submit nominations for the Digital Preservation Awards 2026, October felt a long way off. Now it’s just around the corner. On 15 October, we’ll celebrate the very best work in digital preservation and reveal the winners at a sparkling ceremony during the No Time to Wait 10 conference in Warsaw, Poland!”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Search Engine Roundtable: Google September 2026 Spam Update Has Big Weekend Impact. “The first stage of the Google September 2026 Spam update seems to have been felt in a big way starting Friday, September 25th, with even more movement on Saturday, September 26th and then ending on Sunday, September 27th. There is more to come, since we are only five days into the two-week rollout. The volatility may be calming today, a bit, but it was a pretty heated weekend after the announcement of this September 2026 spam update.”

Engadget: Mozilla deploys a new-look Firefox across desktop and mobile . “Mozilla says it updated Firefox’s themes, icons and colors to modernize it in line with features it has added recently, such as a single off switch for generative AI tools. The redesign itself brings more features to Firefox, as well as the return of compact mode, a much-requested option that Mozilla previously nixed.”

AROUND THE SEARCH & SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Flickr Blog: Celebrating the 2026 Flickr x Black Women Photographers Grant Recipient and Finalists. “We are delighted to announce the recipient and runners-up of the 2026 Flickr x Black Women Photographers grant! For the first time ever, this year’s recipient was announced live on stage at MODE, our inaugural photography festival in Minneapolis. Now in its fourth year, this is our biggest grant yet: $10,000 to help one photographer who is part of both Black Women Photographers and Flickr further their photography practice, along with a two-year Flickr Pro membership and a one-year SmugMug Pro membership.”

UC San Francisco: UCSF Library to Preserve National INTO LIGHT Project Collection on Addiction Stigma Reduction. “Through this collaboration, UCSF Library’s Archives and Special Collections will become the permanent home of the Drug Addiction: Real People, Real Stories — INTO LIGHT Project National Collection. The Collection documents, through hand‑drawn portraits and personal narratives, the lives of individuals from across the United States who were lost to substance use disorder.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Euronews: Russia under Putin lost nearly half its schools — war propaganda fills the rest. “Closures driven by per-pupil funding that made smaller rural schools unviable far outpaced demographic decline. Since 2022, all remaining schools hold mandatory weekly classes on Russian ‘traditional values’ and the Kremlin’s version of events surrounding Russia’s war in Ukraine.”

WHP: Proposed PA legislation aims to increase protections for video game owners. “PA Senator John Kane introduced the Protect Our Video Games Act last week to increase protections for digital media owners. The legislation aims to ‘close the gap between what consumers believe they’re purchasing and the fine print that allows companies to take it away,’ Senator Kane said.”

NBC San Diego: San Diego food truck vendor scammed through fake December Nights website. “A San Diego food truck vendor says scammers posed as “December Nights” event planners and used a fake website to nearly steal his money. Jerry Villasenor, owner of Tiki’s Shaved Ice & Ice Cream, has operated his food truck for about a year and a half. As the holidays approach, he was looking for opportunities to prepare his business for the season.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

The National Herald: Greeks in Foreign Cockpits Project Preserves the History and Stories of Greek Airmen. “From the earliest days of military aviation to the present day, Greek- Americans have played an important role in the history of foreign air forces, where they have served in cockpits all around the world. Their stories are not forgotten, and continue to be researched and shared, particularly through the work of several researchers in Greece, who have spent years working on the long-running historical research project – ‘Greeks in Foreign Cockpits – Aviation History Researchers’.” 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.