HRT: Croatian Radio launches free online library of more than 600 radio dramas. “The Audio Library of Documentary and Feature Radio Dramas brings together notable works from Croatian Radio’s rich archive and contemporary production, allowing listeners to access them anytime, free of charge.”

Connecticut Department of Public Health: New Department of Public Health dashboard brings local overdose data to Connecticut communities. “The Connecticut Department of Public Health (DPH) today launched the Report on Connecticut Unintentional Overdose Deaths. This new online dashboard shows local data on deaths caused by drug overdoses. It is updated each month. People can view data for the state, their town, or their region and see how patterns change over time.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

DigitalTrends: Twitch’s new Stream Recap turns missed livestreams into highlight reels you can watch in minutes. “Have you ever missed the chance to watch your favorite streamer going live? This is why Twitch has launched Stream Recaps, a new feature that bundles the best clips from a livestream into one highlight reel. You can now catch key moments in minutes instead of replaying hours of video.”

The Current Georgia: Court lifts block on Georgia law that restricts children’s access to social media. “Georgia can enforce a 2024 state law that seeks to limit social media companies’ access to children under a new ruling by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The Protecting Georgia’s Children on Social Media Act passed the General Assembly with broad bipartisan support, but an organization representing online platforms sued and secured a preliminary injunction last year.”

AROUND THE SEARCH & SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

PetaPixel: New iPhone Camera App Makes You Wait To See Your Photos. “[Dennis] Berti’s new app, WorthWait Camera, lets users capture 24 or 36 shots per ‘roll,’ then wait 24 hours to see them. It’s designed to recreate the feeling of waiting for photos and not knowing what was captured until the film was developed.”

ZDNet: GridCraft is the open-source Excel clone for Linux I’ve been waiting for. “You might be thinking that this is simply a rebranded MS Excel that runs on top of an interpretation or abstraction layer, but that is not the case. Like the other ArtCraft apps, GridCraft runs natively on whatever OS you are using (Linux, FreeBSD, MacOS, or Windows). And because these apps were written in Rust, they are blazingly fast.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

The Register: Signal bug could keep your mic – and camera – on after hangup. “Make sure you don’t say anything mean or secret after hanging up a call on Signal, as a bug in the encrypted messaging app’s calling library could prevent a call from ending properly, potentially leaving audio and possibly video active.”

Ars Technica: Does opting out of smart TV tracking work? Research finds “suspicious” traffic.. “Smart TVs running operating systems from Samsung, Vizio, and Roku continue sending data to automatic content recognition (ACR) endpoints after users opt out of tracking in the devices’ settings, according to research published on Monday. The paper from Northeastern University researchers points to potential privacy violations from some of the biggest TV brands.”

NiemanLab: When hackers become sources: Inside the new craft of reporting on hacked data. “Reporters covering the invasion of Ukraine have frequently worked with documents pulled from Russian institutions by hackers of different allegiances. Hacktivists have breached surveillance vendors and spyware firms, granting journalists direct and exclusive access to the internal files of companies that sell to repressive governments…. How are journalists responding to these reporting scenarios? For my research, recently published in Journalism Practice, I interviewed 10 journalists across the U.S. and Europe who work or have worked with hacked data.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Texas A&M: New global database provides a fuller picture of the elements that make up plant life. “[Harrison] Coker and an international team have now helped establish that baseline. In a study and global meta-analysis published in ACS Environmental Au, they compiled measurements from 5,474 plant samples across 73 countries, covering 52 elements, 21 climate classes and 26 soil groups. The resulting global database provides a more comprehensive picture of plant elemental composition, including dozens of elements beyond the familiar nutrients typically associated with plant growth.”

International Food Policy Research Institute: When crises disappear from view: The growing humanitarian data drought. “During a time of growing, compounding risks to the global food system—including ongoing conflicts, the most severe El Niño in decades, and disruptions to global trade—in too many places, humanitarian data are disappearing. Government budget cuts, shrinking development assistance, and competing priorities are eroding key streams of data on food security and a range of related issues. This humanitarian data drought is an emerging challenge that threatens to worsen existing crises and possibly create new ones. It demands action to safeguard critical humanitarian data streams. Without fresh data, people in crisis become harder to see, harder to reach, and all too easy to overlook.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Geeks Are Sexy: Deep-Sea Octopus Discovers Laser Pointers, Immediately Gets the Zoomies. “During the E/V Nautilus expedition in the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument, ROV Hercules spotted a camouflaged octopus on the seafloor that promptly developed a severe case of the zoomies, chasing the ROV’s green scaling lasers across the sand.” 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.

New-to-me, from the Santa Maria Sun: Explore the history of View-Master 3D through a Santa Maria resident’s new documentary. “Dave Machin’s hobby collecting View-Master 3D toys started by chance when he picked one up at an antique shop in San Luis Obispo. He clicked through travel reels of destinations like Yosemite, Chicago, and Miami…. He manually converted his stockpile of vintage viewers and reels into a large online database to occupy his mind during the pandemic. Then, an idea for a project sparked.”

People: A Former Radiologist Is Building an Online Archive of Lost St. Louis Restaurants — Here’s How It’s Bringing People Together. “A retired radiologist is mapping the lost restaurants of St. Louis. Harley Hammerman has created Lost Tables, an archival collection of the lost restaurants of the Missouri city, featuring a website and a Facebook group with over 20,000 members.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

AMNY: 40,000 more 9/11 records released as questions linger over toxic air warnings. “Mayor Zohran Mamdani‘s administration released on Wednesday another 40,000 documents related to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, adding to a growing public archive of records that survivors and first responders spent years fighting to access.”

MakeUseOf: Google Docs finally learned Markdown. “Google Docs now natively supports editing .md and .markdown files. This means you can upload and edit your Markdown files directly from Google Drive without needing to convert them first.”

AROUND THE SEARCH & SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

CBC: Google Maps changed its default voice to be more ‘natural.’ People hate it. “Google Maps has changed its default voice for directions — you know, the one that tells you where to turn and how many kilometres until the off-ramp — and it’s safe to say many people are not fans of the new mouthpiece directing them from Point A to Point B.”

New York State Education Department: Archives Partnership Trust Launches New Programs to Expand Educator Access and Enhance Classroom Instruction of New York’s Primary Source Materials. “The New York State Education Department and Archives Partnership Trust’s RDL Gardiner Foundation Educational Resource Center for New York State History today announced two new educational initiatives that will expand access to New York’s historical records and further empower the state’s educators to use primary source materials in the classroom.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Ars Technica: Updated Google privacy policy says your Gmail might be used for advertising. “Using Google’s products and services has always been fundamentally precarious—doing so gives the world’s largest advertising company a lot of juicy personal data. Google has long said it won’t use the sensitive data from products like Gmail, Drive, and Photos for ad personalization, but a change to the company’s privacy policy appears to dismantle that firewall.”

WABE: Atlanta social media influencer indicted in $4 million SNAP fraud scheme. “The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Georgia announced Wednesday that social media personality Mercedes Reshard New, also known as ‘Shawty Dred,’ has been arrested on federal charges after allegedly obtaining more than $4 million in fraudulent SNAP benefits.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Dennis Crowley: Some final words on Foursquare. “After 17 years, FSQ’s ending has been written. Some thoughts on our final years, an effort to honor the team who helped build & maintain FSQ’s legacy, and my attempt to finally get some closure.”

Library of Congress: Become Part of the Legacy of Abolitionist and Educator, Myrtilla Miner. “In 1851, more than a decade before the Emancipation Proclamation was issued, the School for Colored Girls opened in Washington, D.C. with the mission of training Black women educators. The institution was the first of its kind in the District and only the fourth in the nation. Today, the Library of Congress and the By the People volunteer transcription program invite you to celebrate the life and legacy of its courageous and barrier-breaking founder, Myrtilla Miner (1815-1864).” 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.

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Common Crawl: October 2026 Crawl Archive Now Available. “The crawl archive for October 2026 is now available. The data was crawled between October 5th and October 18th, and contains 2.16 billion web pages (or 371.19 TiB of uncompressed content). Page captures are from 41.4 million hosts or 34.3 million registered domains and include 830.1 million new URLs, not visited in any of our prior crawls.”

Motorsports Hall of Fame of America: Motorsports Hall of Fame of America Launches Historic Joseph Freeman Collection. “The Joseph Freeman Collection spans over a century of racing, starting in the 1890s, and includes Indy cars, Sprint cars, Midgets, Formula 1, Sports Cars, Stock Cars, Motorcycles, Off-Road, Powerboats, Land Speed and other categories captured by nearly three dozen of the world’s finest motorsports photographers.”

NYU Center for Data Science: AskChem: A New Search Engine for Chemistry Research. “A chemist choosing how to make a molecule may need to compare reaction conditions and results scattered across dozens of papers. NYU Courant Computer Science PhD candidate Bing Yan and colleagues developed AskChem to make those individual findings searchable, with each result linked to evidence in its source paper.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Reuters: US has for years asked Musk to alter Starlink service in Ukraine, Middle East, sources say. “Well before the throttling this month of Ukraine’s military access to Elon Musk’s satellite communications system, the Biden and Trump administrations had several times asked SpaceX to turn its Starlink service on or off in various countries, according ​to six former senior US officials familiar with the matter.”

DigitalTrends: Google Chrome’s new early warning system could help you spot scam sites. “Anyone who has used Google Chrome has probably seen the red warning screen when they click a suspicious link or try to visit a potentially dangerous website. Google is now beefing up this warning system by adding a new layer that will flag websites that seem fishy, even when Safe Browsing does not have enough confidence to classify them as outright dangerous.”

AROUND THE SEARCH & SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Harvard Gazette: Should parents be wary of Silicon Valley’s influence in schools?. “…leading technologists and executives have been drawn to classrooms in recent decades as laboratories, market opportunities, and above all, problems waiting to be solved — whether with computers, software, or AI chatbots, according to Natasha Singer. Since 2013, Singer has watched those efforts closely as a New York Times tech reporter. She found them at best quixotic or naive and at worst insidious, threatening to deprive young Americans of their ability to think critically about some of the world’s largest companies.”

Variety: H3 Podcast Crew Cuts Ties With Ethan Klein After Hila Klein Says He Has Been Having an Affair. “The ‘H3 Podcast,’ the show co-hosted by Ethan and Hila Klein, is on indefinite hiatus after Hila said he has been having an affair for the last six months and that the couple has separated.”

NBC News: Manuel Otto, German video game creator, dies in apparent livestreamed suicide. “German video game designer and influencer Manuel Otto apparently died by suicide while he was livestreaming on Twitch, according to the streaming platform and his colleagues. He was 30.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Ars Technica: Hegseth warns prediction market bets warp military judgment, endanger troops. “Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth issued a memo warning military personnel against using nonpublic information to make bets on prediction markets, saying the wagers could give important clues to enemy countries.”

MS NOW: Former Florida congressional candidate faces felony charges over online threats. “Two days after Elijah Manley came in third place in the hotly contested August Democratic primary in Florida’s 20th Congressional District, he allegedly told two women on Facebook he would ‘make your life a living hell’ and ‘cut your fucking head off’ if they did not vote for [Angie] Nixon, according to an arrest affidavit reviewed by MS NOW.”

SwissInfo: Swiss former president tackles Nazi-era and colonial loot in museums. “A new Swiss commission, led by former president Simonetta Sommaruga, is now accepting claims for Nazi-looted art and colonial-era cultural property. It will review disputed cases and issue recommendations. Sommaruga spoke to Swissinfo about its mission and priorities.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Punch (Nigeria): Africa moves to establish raw materials database. “The Raw Materials Research and Development Council has said African countries are working towards establishing a continental database of raw materials to attract investment, improve access to information and promote research and value addition.” 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.

University of Southampton: AI reads centuries-old handwriting to reveal Britain’s vast historic shipping trade. “Historians have created a first-of-its-kind online interactive map, using data from hundreds of thousands of pages of centuries-old port records to chart Britain’s growth into a dominant global trading nation. The University of Southampton project used artificial intelligence to transform information from delicate handwritten ‘port books’ into an enormous database of Britain’s merchant shipping past.”

Sounder at Heart: Milestone met: WA Legends presses on. “The fact that Washington State Legends of Soccer is marking its 10th anniversary this month is something to celebrate. Most small businesses fail before their eighth trip around the sun. Adding a pandemic into the equation won’t help.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Associated Press: Ukraine’s strikes on Russian data centers disrupt key services and derail AI research. “While Yandex, Sberbank and VKontakte are coy about the damage, people and businesses across Russia have reported widespread interruptions to cloud services. Banking, e-commerce, geolocation and ride-hailing services, as well as Alisa, Yandex’s virtual assistant, and multimodal AI chatbots all have suffered lasting disruptions. The fallout even spread to Russia’s judicial system, reportedly forcing arbitration courts to cancel or postpone sessions and cutting database access.”

USEFUL STUFF

MakeUseOf: My USB drive carries Wikipedia and a library that doesn’t need Wi-Fi. “I’ve used flash drives for years as glorified pockets for files I’ll probably forget about. Then I loaded Kiwix onto my PC, pointed it at a 16GB stick, and the drive finally got a real job. It now holds a slice of Wikipedia, a Project Gutenberg collection, and room for more reference material that still opens when Windows insists there’s no internet connection. I already knew about plenty of clever ways to repurpose old USB drives, but carrying around an offline reference shelf has become one of my favorites.”

AROUND THE SEARCH & SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Public Technology: Wales plans £400k deal for national online family history service. “The National Library of Wales has revealed plans to invest a six-figure sum in an online service for citizens to investigate their family history. The library – which holds charity status and operates as an arm’s-length body of the Welsh Government – has published a procurement notice alerting potential suppliers that it ‘is seeking to appoint a single service provider to deliver an online family history service’.”

9to5 Google: Some Google Home Speakers downloading massive amounts of data in the background. “In my case, a Google Home Speaker that has not been used in the past day for voice commands or media streaming consumed 17 GB of data in 24 hours. At 3 a.m. PT, it downloaded 9.99 GB. Given the timing, this could be related to failed attempts to download device firmware.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Search Engine Journal: UpdraftPlus WordPress Plugin Security Breach Enables Backdoor Attacks. “A security breach affecting UpdraftPlus, a WordPress backup plugin installed on over 3 million websites, enabled attackers to install malicious plugins and create unauthorized administrator accounts. The attack exploited compromised UpdraftCentral connection keys, allowing attackers to take control of connected WordPress websites without needing a username or password.”

Courthouse News Service: German court calls Google aerial imagery ‘spying’. “A German court on Tuesday ruled Google is breaking Germany’s strict privacy laws by showing people’s properties on its Google Earth and Google Maps services. The Frankfurt Regional Court equated Google’s satellite and aerial 3D imagery services to ‘spying’ when it displays pictures of property without getting permission.”

The Daily Aus: Smart glasses will be banned in all Victorian schools. “Victoria will ban all students across the state from using smart glasses in schools and camps. The ban, announced by the Labor Government ahead of the state’s November election, will build on its existing statewide ban on mobile phones in schools. The Coalition also supports the ban. The new rules will prohibit smart glasses in public, independent and Catholic schools from the start of the 2027 school year.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

North Carolina State University: Study Highlights Need for Policymakers to Look at Digital Policies as Part of Energy, Climate Planning. “A new study underscores the extent to which digital policies cannot be separated from energy policies. The research evaluates the relationship between information communication technologies and carbon dioxide emissions, and finds that the variables they used as proxies for digitalization were associated with increased emissions.” 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.

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EFF: EFF Launches Guide to Help Parents and Youth Protect Privacy Online. “EFF’s guide is about helping parents explore their concerns and identify the threats their children face – like trusting AI chatbots or sharing personal information with strangers – and then determine steps they and their children can take to mitigate those risks while still using the games, educational materials, and communication platforms that help them grow. The guide also compiles links to parental control setup documentation for a variety of popular devices and platforms, and advises parents on quick, easy tasks they can perform to advance their children’s online privacy.”

The Herald (Scotland): New archive launched to help preserve Scotland’s historic castles. “The archive currently includes the Robert and Nicholas Bogdan collection, with further collections being catalogued and digitised. Some material is already available online. The Scottish Castles Association hopes the archive will become a freely accessible resource for anyone interested in Scotland’s castles, bringing together photographs, drawings, research and records previously held across private and institutional collections.”

Video Game History Foundation: Video Game History Foundation Shares Never-Before-Seen Images from Golden Age of Japanese Video Game Culture . “The Video Game History Foundation (VGHF) is excited to add a brand new collection to its ever-growing Digital Library, this time peering back into the boom era of the Japanese video game industry with the aid of numerous photos from resident journalist Colin Williamson.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Mastodon Blog: 5.0: A closer look. “October is here, and it’s almost time for Mastodon’s 5.0 release! We announced our plans for big changes in an early preview back in August. In this companion article, we’re hoping to shed light on some of the decisions behind this major UI overhaul.”

Press Gazette: Publishers urged to delete Facebook and Instagram accounts over T&Cs change. “Campaign group Movement for an Open Web is preparing a legal challenge via the European Commission and UK Competition and Markets Authority. Director James Rosewell said: ‘The harm is imminent and irreversible once content has been ingested into models. Timing matters.'”

AROUND THE SEARCH & SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Politico: Tech giants target spending on Florida’s state-level elections. “Tech firms are donating to Democrats and Republican candidates alike, buying scores of mailers and ads on top of making campaign contributions in the upcoming November midterms races. They’re also funneling tens of thousands of dollars — a meager sum compared to statewide races, but notable at the statehouse level — through a dizzying network of political committees that support Republican leaders in the state Legislature and lawmakers who had a hand in artificial intelligence legislation last session.”

ABC News (Australia): Digital archive helps Sydney’s southern Lebanese community preserve villages now in rubble. “People with southern Lebanese heritage were invited to bring photographs and videos of their ancestral villages, many of which have been damaged or destroyed by the Israeli military over the past six months. A recent analysis by The New York Times found that 48 out of the 60 villages in occupied areas of southern Lebanon had been mostly levelled, including schools, mosques and businesses.”

NBC News: Hooked on YouTube. “Schools wanted educational videos. Students got clickbait. A first-of-its-kind analysis reveals how students are drawn into a platform that keeps them scrolling during class.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

AFP: New Greece law bans social media for under-15s. “Greece’s parliament passed a law Friday banning children under 15 from social media, joining a growing number of countries imposing curbs on young people’s use of the apps.”

State of Rhode Island: Attorney General Neronha sues Meta for fraudulent advertisements. “Attorney General Peter F. Neronha today filed a lawsuit against Meta for allegedly failing to curtail advertisements for fraudulent products and financial scams on its platforms, despite representing to the public that it engages in sophisticated efforts to prevent such ads.”

TorrentFreak: Judge Orders Meta to Name Employees Who Approved Torrenting Anna’s Archive and LibGen. “Meta will have to name the people who greenlit its torrenting of pirated books. A federal magistrate judge has ordered the company to identify everyone who approved sourcing books from LibGen and Anna’s Archive. This goes beyond the employees who ran the downloads and includes whoever decided whether to seed the books to others.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Search Engine Journal: Search Share Fell To 12% For North American Publishers: Chartbeat. “Search engines accounted for 12% of all page views at North American publishers in Chartbeat’s network, based on the data found within the analytics firm’s Q3’26 Audience Report, which was released October 15th, 2026, whereas they represented 21% of page views as reported in the firm’s Q3’25 report.”

NBC News: Hooked on YouTube. “Schools wanted educational videos. Students got clickbait. A first-of-its-kind analysis reveals how students are drawn into a platform that keeps them scrolling during class.” 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.

ArtDaily: V&A launches full digital archive dating back to 2003, available to all members. “The complete archive of V&A Magazine is now digitally available to all V&A members for the first time. Archived since Spring 2003, the collection comprises over 70 issues and explores some of the most significant developments to occur within the museum over the past 20 years. Digital access is included in a V&A membership, and is also available through individual and institutional subscriptions via Exact Editions.”

State of Michigan: Archives of Michigan releases collection highlighting Michigan’s 1961-1962 Constitutional Convention. “Today, the Michigan Department of Technology, Management & Budget (DTMB) announced that the Archives of Michigan has released a collection highlighting the preservation of Michigan’s 1961-1962 Constitutional Convention, which was made possible by a $50,000 grant through the Council on Library and Information Resources’ (CLIR) Recordings at Risk program.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

WordPress: Critical PHP Security Release. “Due to the critical severity of the issues, site owners are encouraged to immediately update their installations of PHP. Your web host may already be working to update PHP and put web application firewall (WAF) rules in place to mitigate the vulnerabilities, but you should still check for updates from your web host and, if necessary, update PHP as soon as possible.”

Associated Press: Meta tells Brazil’s electoral court it gives equal treatment to Lula and Flávio Bolsonaro. “Tech giant Meta said on Tuesday it has complied with an order of Brazil’s electoral court for it to give equal treatment in its platforms to President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and opposition candidate Flávio Bolsonaro ahead of the Oct. 25 runoff for the nation’s top job.”

AROUND THE SEARCH & SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Politico: Russia launched covert influence campaign to undermine US candidates supportive of Ukraine, lawmakers say. “The Russian government has launched a covert online influence campaign to sway public opinion and undermine both Democrats and Republicans sympathetic to Ukraine ahead of the midterms, two key Democratic lawmakers warned Wednesday.”

Engadget: These 6 retro sites let you relive the glory days of 2000s Flash games . “Adobe ended support for Flash Player on December 31, 2020. This was due to a changing landscape where standards like HTML5 reduced the need for plugins like Flash, which suffered from security vulnerabilities that couldn’t be sufficiently addressed over the years…. But that doesn’t mean content built with Flash is gone forever. You can thankfully still play Flash games in 2026 using websites that run the original programs, most of them using an open-source Flash emulator called Ruffle.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

The Guardian: What is PHP and how serious is the computer language flaw causing website shutdowns?. “Website owners faced millions of attempts to exploit a serious security vulnerability in their programming language, it has emerged, triggering a rush by governments and businesses to fix the problem. The newly discovered vulnerabilities in PHP, a programming language that underpins most websites, allows hackers to carry out cyber-attacks and steal data if not fixed. What were the vulnerabilities and why did they affect so many sites?”

Reuters: Norway targets ‘harmful’ social media, games with under-16 ban. “Norway’s planned social media ban for children will include provisions targeting ‘harmful platforms’, the government said on Monday, naming messaging and gaming ​services Roblox, Snapchat and TikTok among those affected.”

EdSource: Personal information for 7M California students stolen following hack. “The personal information of about 7 million California students has been stolen following a hack of the organization responsible for administering the state’s Smarter Balanced Assessments and English proficiency exams, Politico reported.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Techdirt: Accident Or Not, The No Kings Takedown Is Why You Shouldn’t Rent Your Megaphone From Zuck. “This past weekend was the latest in an ongoing series of (massive) ‘No Kings’ protests held around the country (and in some cases around the globe). The latest one was part of a ‘get out the (early) vote’ campaign to make sure people are voting in the upcoming midterm elections. And, in the middle of it, suddenly it was reported that the No Kings Instagram account was suspended for about an hour, with admin access locked out for a few more hours.” 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.

Ars Technica: Meta Muse exposes users’ personal and business secrets when they share conversations. “Muse, the new general-purpose AI agent from Meta, can expose sensitive information when users share conversations through web links, researchers reported Monday. In response to questions from Ars about the behavior, Meta said it’s suspending the sharing feature while the company reviews it and considers making changes.”

DATA CENTERS

Politico: Data center real estate is getting hard to find. “backlash to large data centers for artificial intelligence is rewriting the rules. Instead of ramping up tax incentives, 16 state legislatures have considered outright bans on their development. As the glut in projects strains U.S. electrical grids and voters from both parties increasingly sour on the bulky facilities, developers are rethinking what they really need.”

North Dakota Monitor: Data centers can’t be stopped, but good policy is needed, NDSU researcher says. “There’s no way of stopping the development of data centers and artificial intelligence, a North Dakota State University researcher said Wednesday, adding that attempts to slow development would only push it to other areas.”

AI AGENTS

Axios: Scoop: Unvetted AI agents are accessing U.S. bank accounts. “Major U.S. banks are detecting unauthorized third-party AI agents operating inside customer accounts, with some agents attempting to take actions that appear to be independent of user instructions, sources tell Axios.”

AI MODELS

TechCrunch: Canva releases its first image generation model. “Design platform Canva released its first image generation model, called Canva Craft, developed by its research team to compete with same-category models from Google, OpenAI, ByteDance, and Meta.”

AI IN WORK

The Guardian: Companies rushed in on AI. Now some are pulling back. “Employers are navigating a flood of errors and low-quality work that are sapping employee time, raising privacy and security risks and pushing up costs. Now, some businesses that started off fast and furious on AI are pumping the brakes, implementing restrictions where experimentation was once encouraged, bringing back experienced workers and upping training efforts.”

Denver Post: A Denver Chinese restaurant owner wanted a better name for a bun. So she turned to ChatGPT.. “Like [Nina] Zhang, local restaurateurs are using ChatGPT and similar chatbots to experiment with their recipes, design promotional fliers, manage inventory and handle workplace conflicts. The tool has helped them run their restaurants more efficiently at a time when many in the industry are making razor-thin margins, they said.”

AI IN GOVERNANCE

KATU: KATU probes alleged ‘deepfake’ as cached images show upside-down flag behind Nafisa Fai. “KATU is investigating the controversy surrounding an alleged ‘deepfake’ video of Washington County Commissioner Nafisa Fai speaking at an event in Minnesota in front of an upside-down American flag. Fai is running against fellow Washington County Commissioner Pam Treece to become chair of the County Board of Commissioners.”

AROUND THE AI WORLD

Futurism: IMF Warns That AI Bubble Could Take Down the Entire World Economy. “Fears of an AI bubble have been growing for years. And now the International Monetary Fund is the latest to sound the alarm. In its Global Financial Stability Report published last week, the global financial institution warned that markets everywhere are increasingly at the mercy of precarious AI investments.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Reuters: Florida lawyer referred for possible discipline over filing that judges called ‘AI slop’. “A Florida appeals court on Wednesday referred a lawyer to the Florida bar for possible professional discipline after finding her filings in a case bore hallmarks ​of generative AI output that the panel of judges called ‘AI slop.'”

RESEARCH & OPINION

New York Times: Customer Service Chatbots Must Be Stopped. “It’s easy to dismiss these exhausting mazes of chatbots, robocalls, irrelevant pop-ups and consent forms as the routine irritations of life lived on tiny screens. But taken together, these episodes can amount to something much larger — delayed medical care, denied insurance coverage, predatory subscription practices and scams that cost Americans an estimated $119 billion a year. Now, artificial intelligence is starting to make a bad situation worse.”

The Conversation: How governments worldwide are shaping what AI can say about politics. “I’m a researcher at a nonpartisan think tank at Vanderbilt University, where I study free speech policy. In two reports published in 2025 and 2026, my colleagues and I worked with global legal experts to examine how governments in 12 countries and regions regulate artificial intelligence. Our research shows that they often use existing rules, such as national security or anti-state propaganda laws, rather than new AI laws to control what AI models can say.”

NPR: AI is shaking up the field of mathematics. But what comes next?. “Mathematicians are struggling to figure out what to do with a flood of new results from artificial intelligence. As NPR’s Geoff Brumfiel reports, a release by the company OpenAI is shaping up to be just a massive homework assignment.” 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.

NEW RESOURCES

Scienmag: AI-built database of 378,000 English word families reveals how morphology shapes children’s reading. “A team of reading researchers has unveiled what they describe as the largest morphological database of English ever constructed, and used it to map, with unprecedented scope, the word-building patterns that children encounter as they learn to read.”

Found in my RSS feeds, apparently launched in late April: the Techno-Optimism Archive. “Techno-Optimism Archive traces the long history of hype surrounding new technologies….explore moments when the next big invention was supposed to solve the world’s problems.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

DigitalTrends: Arc browser is shutting down in December. Long live, ya trailblazer . “Arc browser is shutting down on December 22, following a long spell of maintenance-only work as the company behind it moves forward with its successor, Dia. Earlier today, The Browser Company announced that the beloved web browser will ride into the sunset in two months, but will continue development of the Dia browser.”

New York Times: When Starshield Cut Out, Ukrainian Drones Fell From the Skies. “Ukrainian accounts of Starshield’s abrupt throttling have become a flashpoint in a worsening feud between President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine and President Trump. A week after the first problems were reported, Ukrainian troops said that the situation had improved but that connectivity issues remained. The Trump administration has offered mixed messages, both denying any change to Starshield service and saying that service has been restored.”

NiemanLab: Publishers pressure Meta to nix new terms that would let the company scrape their websites. “The largest news publishing trade association in the United States is calling on Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg to suspend the implementation of the company’s new commercial terms of service, set to go into effect on October 30. In an open letter to Zuckerberg published Thursday, News/Media Alliance’s president and CEO Danielle Coffey wrote that Meta should ‘withdraw these terms and should hold discussions around future changes with NMA and publishers.'”

AROUND THE SEARCH & SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Variety: Trump Says Google CEO Rejected His Request to Rename Atlantic Ocean on Google Maps. “President Donald Trump, who has already renamed two bodies of water after America, said he would like to redub the Atlantic Ocean as well — but that the CEO of Google pushed back on the idea.”

Associated Press: A Vermont woman scrubs grime from gravestones and researches who is buried there. “[Caitlin] Abrams doesn’t solely focus on the cleaning process. She researches and then shares the details she has found of the individual lives in her videos while filming the moss and buildup being washed away. Abrams focuses on 18th and 19th century headstones in remote yet picturesque graveyards in Vermont, and her viewers are drawn to her deep dives into the past that also touch on the dark nature of death and spirits.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

CNBC: Meta ordered to pay $25 billion penalty in New Mexico Cambridge Analytica case. “Meta
was ordered to pay $25 billion in penalties by a New Mexico court on Wednesday as part of a data privacy case that stemmed from the company’s Cambridge Analytica scandal from nearly a decade ago.”

Reuters: California settles 23andMe data breach claims for $6 million. “California Attorney General Rob Bonta on Monday announced the state will receive a $6 million settlement payment in 23andMe’s bankruptcy, resolving California’s ​legal claims related to a 2023 data breach that exposed 6.9 ‌million customers’ genetic and other personal information.”

Politico: The Pentagon is quietly building an elite new tech sabotage agency. “The Pentagon has spent months quietly building an elite new tech agency to help covertly disrupt and sabotage foreign technology programs considered threats to American military superiority.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Neil Turner Photographer: Bye bye Alamy . “The best that I could hope for was 40% but my calculations told me that I would be dropping to their basic 20% level pretty soon. I’m a level-headed chap and the thought that 20% of something is better than 100% of nothing went through my head many, many times. When you factor in that more and more of my limited sales were coming through at US$0.39 each and that I was actually only going to receive 8 US cents or around 6.5 British pennies for each of them, the final straw was well within reach.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Second Wave Media: Nature beneath the power lines: Transforming utility corridors into public trails . “In Portage, partnerships with Consumers Energy have allowed land used for electricity infrastructure to become connections for bikers and pedestrians…. In July, Consumers Energy announced that it had not only surpassed its goal to ‘enhance, restore, or protect 6,500 acres of land,’ but reached that goal earlier than anticipated.” 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.

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Baltimore Fishbowl: New data dashboard tracks crashes on Maryland roads. “Maryland drivers (and nervous parents) now have a resource that tracks crashes on the roads thanks to a new statewide crash data dashboard. Launched by the Maryland Department of Transportation Motor Vehicle Administration’s Highway Safety Office (MHSO), the new dashboard uses the crash information to identify trends and shape safety initiatives for the future.”

Lawrence Times: KDOT launches tool to track snowplows on Kansas highways. “An online tool will now allow travelers to track active snowplows on Kansas highways in real time, the Kansas Department of Transportation has announced…. KDOT will also have 12 trucks across the state with cameras that appear on the online map as blue truck icons. People can click those icons to see recent images from the trucks.”

Signal Cleveland: New tool lets Clevelanders search police discipline cases. “For years, Cleveland police discipline records have been public – technically. But in practice, they have been difficult to access, search or analyze. The records exist across thousands of pages of hearing notices, disciplinary decisions and arbitration records that have never been assembled into a single public resource. Signal Cleveland, working with Cleveland Documenters, spent years collecting and organizing those records into a searchable database that covers disciplinary hearings involving more than 1,000 Cleveland Division of Police employees between 2016 and mid- 2026.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Futurism: Truth Social Stock Hits All-Time Low as Userbase Craters on Trump’s Twitter Clone. “The company has weathered bad news before, hitting all-time low stock prices on multiple occasions over the past year. But those days now look balmy in comparison, with the social network’s shares sliding more than 7.5 percent on Monday alone and setting a new rock bottom of just $6.40. Zooming out doesn’t paint a prettier picture, either: over the past month, the company’s stock has fallen a stomach-churning 29 percent.”

AROUND THE SEARCH & SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Engadget: LinkedIn is adding new tools to help people with their side hustles . “LinkedIn is adding a bunch of new features meant to help people keep up with their side hustles, vibe-coding projects and other pursuits that might not align with their day job. The company is tweaking profiles so people can highlight multiple jobs and introducing new creator-focused tools for founders.”

Mashable: What’s going on with Elizabeth Holmes’ X account?. “A lot is dissected in the nearly three-hour runtime of Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim’s new documentary, You Can See Everything, much of it centered on the very Fielderian topics of truth and reality. The question of whether disgraced biotech founder Elizabeth Holmes is lying threads throughout the film, and extends to her X account, which is active even as Holmes is serving her 11.25-year prison sentence.” The article has spoilers.

SECURITY & LEGAL

Courthouse News Service: Justices’ book deals disarm SCOTUS in music copyright case . “The justices’ lucrative publishing deals left the Supreme Court unable to settle a major music copyright dispute Monday. Four of the high court’s nine members sat out on an appeal from the international record label BMG Rights Management. The label is owned by the same German media company as Penguin Random House, which published books by Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett and Ketanji Brown Jackson.”

ProPublica: Trump Appointees Asked a Federal Cybersecurity Agency to Secretly Acquire a Voting Machine — and Hack It. “The appointees wanted the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency to procure the machine, examine it and report back the findings so they could be given to the White House, according to two former administration officials with knowledge of the request. The proposition was shocking to CISA’s career staffers, according to one of the former officials. CISA typically worked to thwart hackers.”

Bloomberg: Australia to sue Facebook, TikTok for alleged breaches of ban: Minister. “Australia’s government is set to sue Facebook, TikTok and other major digital platforms for alleged non-compliance with a nationwide social media ban for under-16s, Communications Minister Anika Wells said in an interview.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Pew (PEW PEW PEW PEW PEW PEW!): 1 in 5 Americans Regularly Get News on TikTok. “TikTok is primarily known for short-form video sharing, but it has also become a common place for many people to get news. A fifth of U.S. adults regularly get news on TikTok, according to a Pew Research Center survey from August. That share is unchanged from 2025 but up from just 3% in 2020.” 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.

Reuters: Russia cracks down on AI bears as real attacks spread fear. “A woman in Russia’s Far East was fined this week after an AI-generated image of a bear, created to prank a friend, went viral ​and triggered a real-life hunt, the regional courts said. Russian authorities are ‌on high alert this year due to a spate of deadly attacks in several regions, where growing bear populations and a poor crop of berries and pine nuts have increased the ​chances of encounters with humans, experts say.”

Mashable: AI did not delete Swedish reality TV series, broadcaster says. “Swedish television channel TV4 has refuted reports that an AI agent deleted an entire season of a television show mere weeks before it was scheduled to air. Instead, the problem was allegedly caused by human error.”

ANTI-AI SENTIMENT

Orlando Sentinel: ‘They utterly hate them’: Florida candidates, counties face data center debate. “Data center fervor is sweeping Central Florida, as voters pressure political leaders to keep the massive hubs of network infrastructure out of their cities and counties for fear they’ll gobble up local water resources and lead to higher electricity prices. And whether it’s in Florida’s governor race or local contests, candidates are being pinned down in forums and interviews for their positions on so-called hyper-scale data centers that polling shows voters loathe.”

DATA CENTERS

New Jersey Globe: Data centers in Jersey? Fuhgeddaboudit. “Nearly three-quarters of New Jersey adults oppose building a data center in their hometown, and a substantial majority don’t want them built anywhere in the state, according to a new Rutgers-Eagleton Poll released Friday. The poll found that 72% oppose a data center in their town or city, including 54% who strongly oppose it, while only 21% support one.”

Oklahoma Watch: More Data Centers, More Coal Emissions — and an OU Researcher Watching Atlantic Storms. “Air quality alerts that popped up on Oklahomans’ phones over the weekend reflected Professor Xiao-Ming Hu’s research findings in real time. Hu is an air quality researcher at the National Weather Center at the University of Oklahoma. His work focuses on ozone pollutants from fossil fuel-burning power plants and how tropical storms in the Atlantic can push those pollutants across the state.”

AI AGENTS

Gizmodo: Four AI Agents Have Slain Minecraft’s Ender Dragon. “Today in news about stuff that AI agents have done that is relatively benign and/or at least does not involve hacking the government-funded healthcare system in my home country: beating Minecraft! And look, I’ll be honest: as someone who hasn’t allowed Minecraft into my life, I can’t say I was entirely aware that ‘beating’ it was something that one could do. Isn’t it a voxelized sandbox in which one can do cool things like building hard drives and giant temples and whatnot?”

AI IN GOVERNANCE

Politico: Wanted: Tech experts to help Congress regulate AI. “Lawmakers are under pressure to pass legislation to address the threats from advanced artificial intelligence, but many have serious doubts they have the capacity to regulate the technology’s explosive growth. Few are expecting lawmakers themselves — some of whom still proudly use flip phones — to become AI experts overnight. But while even congressional Luddites acknowledge there is urgency for Capitol Hill to quickly expand its expertise in tech policy to help with legislating, regulating and conducting effective oversight, there’s no consensus yet on how to achieve it.”

Idaho Education News: Idaho politicians are using AI to write for them. “The next time you come across an op-ed by an Idaho politician, think twice about the source. It may not be human. Op-eds and other online posts from some of Idaho’s most powerful elected officials contain heavy doses of artificial intelligence, according to AI detectors, tools that distinguish between writing by humans and writing that comes from machines like ChatGPT.”

AROUND THE AI WORLD

Kotaku: MrBeast Joins Shark Tank, Invests Quarter Million In AI-Powered ‘Ball 2’. “James Stephen Donaldson, the algorithm ruling, product hustling, normal smile having YouTube superstar better known as MrBeast recently made his debut on Shark Tank. During his first episode on the show where celebrity investors put ‘idea people’ through a humiliation ritual, Donaldson cut from the pack to back an AI-powered ball. It rolls. You can throw it. It’s, y’know, got AI in there. Donaldson opted to invest a quarter million into the product.”

Associated Press: Consumer apprehension grows as US retailers adopt AI-assisted pricing tools. “Digital price tags are rapidly replacing paper ones in grocery aisles. Artificial intelligence tools help businesses decide what to charge by predicting how customers might respond. Terms like ‘dynamic pricing’ and ‘surveillance pricing’ are stirring anxiety on social media, where users wonder if different people are getting different prices for the same product.”

KQED: Too Many Bots in the Kitchen? Williams Sonoma Bans AI Shoppers. “San Francisco-based Williams Sonoma and Pottery Barn sent emails to customers this week, updating terms of service to bar customer AI agents from shopping on their websites without the company’s written permission.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Engadget: Homeland Security bans DeepSeek use in federal civilian agencies . “The Department of Homeland Security has issued a sweeping restriction to remove DeepSeek use across all federal civilian agencies and their IT systems. In a notice published with the Federal Register, DHS characterized the risks of DeepSeek use as potentially resulting in the “transfer of sensitive data” of US government employees and vendors to the Chinese government.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Pew (PEW PEW PEW PEW PEW!): The Gender Gap in AI. “Men report using chatbots more regularly than women and are more likely to turn to them for a variety of things, including work. Women, on the other hand, are more skeptical about AI, including how it will impact their own lives.”

New Jersey Monitor: NJ picks Rutgers to lead social media research center. “Gov. Mikie Sherrill said Monday that Rutgers was selected through a competitive grant process that will provide the state university $500,000 to assess the impact of social media on New Jersey teens, identify specific measures that can be used to mitigate the damage it causes, and promote healthy and responsible use of social media apps.”

Mashable: A new mission to find Amelia Earhart’s plane turns to AI for help. “In all seriousness, generative AI models like ChatGPT were prompted to analyze historical theories and place a digital pin where Earhart’s Lockheed Electra 10-E might be resting. Ironically, the algorithm pointed to the same visual anomaly that human scientists had spotted on satellite imagery years earlier.” 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.