Mercyhurst University: Mercyhurst marks 25th anniversary of 9/11 with new Homeland Security Collection. “On the 25th anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks, Mercyhurst University is launching a new digital archival collection documenting an important chapter in the nation’s response to 9/11: the creation of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties (CRCL).”

INSITE: GROOVE PROTOCOL PRESENTS CULTURE: Digital Archive of Croatian Electronic Music Scene. “In a selfless attempt to keep all the information regarding the progress, impact and evolution of Croatian electronic music scene, three individuals have come together and created a new platform called Culture, imagined as its official archive.”

LAist: An oral history project captures stories in and around K-Town. Now anyone can dive in. “Lauren Kim works alongside her father, Hanjik, at his traditional medicine clinic on the border of Koreatown and MacArthur Park. But it took an oral history interview for her to hear parts of his story for the first time…. Now that interview, along with hundreds of others about life in and around Koreatown, is being gathered into the new K-Town Archive in a partnership with UCLA that also collects photographs and ephemera.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

TechSpot: Windows 11 can now reinstall itself from the cloud, no USB stick required. “Windows 11 Insider Beta Preview Build 26220.9343 introduces a new reinitialization option that downloads a factory version of the OS from the cloud. The new feature lets users and IT administrators reset a device without needing a USB stick or a custom image.”

Gizmodo: LG Denies Its TVs Are Spying on You (Unless You Opted In). “LG is pushing back against claims that its TVs eavesdrop on owners constantly after a joint report by Gamers Nexus and Level1Techs discovered unsettling details about how much data it phones home—including when the devices are offline or in standby mode.”

USEFUL STUFF

MakeUseOf: I went looking for obscure open-source apps and found 6 that are way too good to be this unknown. “I like open-source software, but recommendation lists tend to circle the same dozen apps until you could name them from memory. So I went further down the rabbit hole, through smaller GitHub projects, niche recommendation threads, and apps that barely seem to exist outside their communities. The search turned up a much less familiar collection.”

AROUND THE SEARCH & SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Infovaticana: The Vatican Library and Apostolic Archive will have a new building inside Vatican City. “Pope Leo XIV has ordered the construction of a new building within Vatican City primarily intended to expand the spaces of the Vatican Apostolic Library and the Vatican Apostolic Archive, after the growth of their collections has rendered the currently available facilities insufficient.”

Found in my RSS feeds: a Chrome and Firefox extension called Post Peek. “Read one X post and leave. A Chrome and Firefox (Manifest V3) extension that opens x.com and twitter.com post links in a popup instead of sending you to the full site.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Reuters: Indian police to query Google over 500,000 fake Gmail IDs linked to bomb hoax. “Indian police will question Google over a lack ​of safeguards after smashing a criminal network that set up and managed more than ‌500,000 fake Gmail accounts to send hoax bomb threats to government offices, a police official told Reuters on Tuesday.”

EFF: The High Crime of “LMAO”: How Cops Are Treating Mass Surveillance As a Joke. “When law enforcement and tech salespeople pitch ALPRs to city councils, they stick to a familiar script. They trumpet the technology, which is often provided by private companies like Flock Safety, Motorola Solutions, or Axon, as an essential tool for solving high-stakes crimes, such as car jacking, kidnapping, or murder. But when you strip away the carefully curated talking points, the data continues to reveal a different (and frankly, ridiculous) story.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Texas A&M: How cellphone data can help airports improve the travel experience. “Researchers use mobile network signals to build a forecasting model that predicts crowds, cuts congestion and emissions and drives staffing and transit decisions.”

BBC: Buckingham Palace works uncover trove of everyday items dating back to 1800s. “A pair of battered, hobnailed boots and a decades-old newspaper cutting are among a trove of everyday objects unearthed during restoration work at Buckingham Palace. The misplaced items are thought to belong to staff who worked at the palace decades ago, and were found by workers carrying out the £369m refurbishment.” 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.

Spotlight Delaware: Spotlight Delaware launches Campaign Finance Explorer. “Spotlight Delaware has launched the Delaware Campaign Finance Explorer, a free, easy-to-use tool for the public to see who is funding candidates running for state and county offices this year.”

New-to-me, from Londonist: “It’s Like An Addiction”: The Man Archiving Pirate Radio Station Kool FM. “First broadcasting on 28 November 1991, Kool FM quickly rose to the top of London’s pirate radio scene. As the jungle genre grew in 1992/1993 — then exploded in 1994 — Kool was at the forefront. It continues to this day under the Rinse umbrella. Here, curator of the Original Kool Archives, Trevor 7oaks, explains his life-long infatuation with the station, and his self-appointed mission to archive as much of it as possible.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Tubefilter: YouTube’s new public viewcounts over-report actual engagement by 40%. “YouTube‘s new public viewcounts over-report engagement by 40%, according to new data from Agentio. As you probably know, YouTube last month introduced a significant change to how it counts views on long-form content. Instead of requiring people to watch for a certain length of time before considering them ‘a viewer’ (the amount has never been publicly disclosed, but word on the street is it’s about 30 seconds), YouTube decided it will count a view from the instant a video’s first frame loads.”

Kagi Blog: Kagi Translate is back. “Today, Kagi Translate is moving to a freemium model and launching a new standalone Individual subscription for $8/month. Anyone with a Kagi account can continue using Translate for free with a limited monthly allowance. For people who use it more regularly, the new Individual plan includes all Kagi Translate features. Translate will also continue to be included with the Kagi Ultimate plan.”

AROUND THE SEARCH & SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Internet Archive Blog: Internet Archive Receives IMLS Grant to Expand Access to Local and State Government Information. “Internet Archive has received funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) to support the development of ATLAS (Access To Local And State government information), a digital preservation program for state and local government agencies.”

Korea Times: Korea uses fantasy video game to drive real-world tourism. “The Korea Tourism Organization (KTO) on Monday announced a partnership with NEXON Games, one of the nation’s premier game developers. Under the partnership, the state agency will open its vast, high-definition digital archive — comprising roughly 71,000 expert-vetted photos and video assets — to assist developers in sculpting realistic virtual landscapes of Korea.”

Search Engine Land: Advertisers report Google Ads credits being revoked after spending. “Some Google Ads promotional credits are reportedly being invalidated after advertisers have already spent the amount required to qualify, potentially leaving businesses with higher advertising costs than they expected…. PPC consultant David Melamed said he has encountered the issue twice in a short period.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Gizmodo: Doctor Doom Shows Up to Support Seattle’s Surveillance Network. “Ahead of the upcoming Avengers: Doomsday movie, its titular supervillain apparently made a stop at Seattle City Council this week to endorse the city’s growing surveillance network.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

PsyPost: Psychologists find smartphone screenshots can cause a profound degree of “digital amnesia”. “New research suggests that taking a screenshot of an image on your smartphone makes you less likely to remember it later, without providing any compensatory boost to your mental bandwidth. A series of experiments indicates that the simple act of capturing an image on a screen triggers a lasting inattention to that experience, leaving people with worse memory for what they just saw. These findings were published in Memory & Cognition.”

Museums Journal: Record number of museums awarded Designated status. “A record nine museums, libraries and archives have been awarded Designated status for their collections – which span film memorabilia, the archive of a medieval monastery and documents detailing the design, construction and operation of the world’s first underwater tunnel. The Designation scheme was first launched in 1997 to recognise and celebrate collections of national and international importance, and was relaunched by Arts Council England (ACE) in 2024 with a new focus on the place-based significance of collections.” 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.

Penn State: Center for Energy Law and Policy’s Michael Helbing and Hannah Wiseman release Solar Ordinance Database. “The Penn State Center for Energy Law and Policy has published a user-friendly Pennsylvania solar ordinance database. The database includes filters for a variety of provisions in local government ordinances addressing grid-scale solar development…. The database contains 4,900 ordinance provisions from 300 local governments across 57 counties.”

The Drive: One Dude Mapped Route 66 in Its Entirety, and You Can Scroll Through All 2,199 Miles. “Jake Boyles is the developer of the Pit Stop: Road Trip Exit Guide app, which shows restaurants and other points of interest located near highway exits. He spent this past summer mapping Route 66 to create a version of the app specifically for the historic highway. It lets you scroll through all 2,199 miles, showing elevation changes and places to stop along the way.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Source New Mexico: New Mexico Department of Justice presents Mark Zuckerberg deposition in state’s Facebook case. “New Mexico Department of Justice attorneys led the second day of the state’s trial against Facebook by showing the jury a video deposition of founder Mark Zuckerberg regarding allegations that his company’s leaders publicly misrepresented how they stored and shared users’ data.”

Google Blog: Doubled cell limits in Google Sheets now generally available. “We’re committed to continuously improving Sheets to ensure it is a powerful, responsive, and scalable spreadsheet tool for your needs. To that end, we’ve increased the cell limit in Google Sheets from up to 10 million cells to up to 20 million cells. This limit applies to new, existing, and imported files.”

Ars Technica: Panic builds over bankrupt Spirit’s looming data sale to Google. “Doug Kreuzkamp was shocked when news outlets reported that Google won an auction to buy a huge amount of operational data as part of Spirit Airlines’ bankruptcy proceedings. Kreuzkamp founded a startup called Springshot in 2011, which created a widely used proprietary platform that helps humans and AI systems improve airline efficiency and quickly solve logistics problems so flights can stay on time and airlines can operate as smoothly as possible. Hundreds of airports use it globally.”

USEFUL STUFF

Danvk: Introducing mapsnap: Automated Georeferencing for Historic Sanborn Insurance Maps. “It is, for the most part, possible to automaticallly georeference Sanborn maps. Some maps are harder than others and it doesn’t get everything right, but it generally does a good job. My program to automatically georeference Sanborn maps is called mapsnap, and I’m excited to explain how it works!”

Council on Foreign Relations: Ten Resources Debunking September 11 Conspiracy Theories. “Left unrebutted, conspiracy theories can extend their reach, especially through social media as new generations of Americans come of age. So, if you doubt the official story of the September 11 attacks, or know someone who does, check out one or more of the ten resources below. Three are books and reports, two are articles, four are video documentaries, and one is a radio show.”

AROUND THE SEARCH & SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Tubefilter: IMDb’s “digital creator” label lets artists “represent the full scope of their work in one place”. “The Internet Movie Database is as old as the World Wide Web itself, and as it enters its 36th year of activity, it is getting an important update. For the first time, the website known as IMDb is adding labels that identify various types of digital creators.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Khmer Times: China, US pledge to work with Cambodia on cultural heritage preservation. “The embassies of China and the United States in Cambodia have announced continued cooperation with Cambodian authorities to promote cultural heritage preservation, including antiquity restoration, joint archaeological research and human resource development.”

KnowWhere: A Pint Near Me – what you do after 15 seconds of fame. “After I had got over my 15 seconds of relative fame, I wondered whether I could do something better mapping pubs in the UK. I asked my new friend Claude Code what we could do with the FHRS data and the pubs data on OSM, a good bit of whirring and numerous back and forths and data testing/verification and we had a data pipeline.”

Buffalo Bill Center of the West: Buffalo Bill Center of the West Authenticates Trove of Historic Early 1800s Medals. “Following a thorough course of testing and analysis carried out earlier this year, the Buffalo Bill Center of the West has definitively authenticated a trove of rare and historically significant medals tied to key periods and events in the history of the American West spanning more than 100 years.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

New York Times: The 92-Year-Old Mathematician and the Teenage Apprentice. “Joan Birman thought her major discoveries were behind her. Then came an email from a young neighbor — a girl who knew little but wanted to learn.” This is a great read. 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.

Stony Brook University: Announcing Our New JSTOR Digital Collections Portal!. “Stony Brook University Libraries is thrilled to announce a major milestone in our ongoing mission to preserve, digitize, and share our cultural heritage collections with the world: our brand-new JSTOR Digital Collections portal is live! Through this portal, three of our collections are now freely accessible on JSTOR.org, connecting global researchers, students, and community members to these important primary sources.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

New York Times: Despite Pledges From Musk, Child Sexual Abuse Material Persists on X. “Elon Musk has long vowed to remove child sexual abuse material on his social media platform, X. But some of the content continues to appear. A review by the Canadian Center for Child Protection found that the site’s own artificial intelligence chatbot, Grok, responded to requests from users by creating dozens of sexualized and sometimes sexually explicit photos of children, including victims previously known to law enforcement, at the beginning of the year. The images included children in sexualized poses with partially exposed genitals, in states of undress and with fluid on their faces.”

AROUND THE SEARCH & SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Reuters: Roblox expands tools to help creators build, distribute games. “Roblox plans to let creators distribute their games as standalone apps across mobile, PC and consoles, ​the company said at its developers conference ‌on Friday, as it seeks to make games easier to access beyond the Roblox app.”

Tubefilter: YouTube wants creators to pitch brands with guesstimated TV co-viewership stats. “YouTube has come up with another way to pump viewcounts. Just a few weeks after announcing it would start counting a ‘view’ from the very first frame of a video, YouTube has added a new metric called Views (Co-Viewed) that ‘estimates’ when multiple people are watching YouTube content together on one TV screen.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Radio Free Europe: Yale Tracking Of Ukrainian Children Taken By Russia At Risk As US Reshapes $25M Program. “Researchers at Yale University’s Humanitarian Research Lab working to track Ukrainian children forcibly transferred to Russia and Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine could see their positions eliminated by December unless new funding is secured, the lab’s executive director told RFE/RL. The warning comes as the US State Department moves to restructure a $25 million program that the Yale lab was among the organizations competing for.”

Euronews: Broken gadget? The EU’s repair directive makes manufacturers fix it. “Every year, Europeans throw out millions of tonnes of electronic waste, much of it repairable. The EU’s Right to Repair Directive, passed this summer, applies across all 27 member states and pushes manufacturers to make repairs easier than replacement.”

Streetsblog NYC: Empty Quarter: City’s Crash Database Hasn’t Been Updated In Three Months. “The city’s public data on motor vehicle crashes — the portal that provides the underpinning for public-facing, easy-to-use, map-based websites such as Crashmapper and Crashcount — hasn’t updated since June 11, meaning that thousands of crashes are not showing up on those independent websites.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Wheal Martyn Clay Works: Wheal Martyn Awarded £49,942 Archives Revealed Grant to Catalogue and Share Cornwall’s China Clay Archives. “Wheal Martyn Clay Works has received a £49,942 grant from The National Archives’ Archives Revealed partnership programme, which is funded by The National Archives, The National Lottery Heritage Fund, the Pilgrim Trust and the Wolfson Foundation…. This vital support will help us to commence work to catalogue our nationally significant archive which documents the history of an industry which drove the Cornish economy for over 100 years.”

Scientific Reports: How to detect information voids using longitudinal data from social media and web searches. “The model of the attention economy, where content producers compete for the attention of users, relies on two key forces: information supply and demand. This study leverages the feedback loop between these forces to develop a method for detecting and quantifying information voids, i.e., periods in which little or no reliable information is available on a given topic.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Gothamist: Brooklyn Public Library launches first ever craft library. “The Brooklyn Public Library will launch its first-ever craft library on Wednesday, allowing library cardholders to borrow art supplies for a variety of activities, including screen printing, bookbinding, metal stamping and hand embroidery. The program is the passion project of Jess Harwick, a craft-loving BPL librarian of eight years.” 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.

Found in my RSS Feeds: the The Eleventh of September. This site was first launched in 2006, went offline eventually, and was brought back online recently. “The Eleventh of September is a memorial by Tape Art. The artists created 490 drawings of life-sized figures using the temporary medium of tape. Each figure is dedicated to one person killed on September 11, 2001 at the World Trade Center, and remembers others. Search for a name, or choose a heart on the map to follow the figures through the city.”

Library of Congress: Library Makes Nearly 500 First-Hand 9/11 Responder Accounts Available Online. “The Library of Congress has launched an online collection of nearly 500 first-hand accounts from 9/11 responders to mark the 25th anniversary of the World Trade Center attack. Housed in the American Folklife Center, the collection includes 484 full-length video interviews conducted between April 2010 and September 2024, along with their corresponding transcripts, which document what responders witnessed, why they responded, what they endured, and how the experience affected their health, families and lives in the years that followed.”

Virginia Tech: Project digitally recreates a buried World War I battlefield. “The Applied Research in Immersive Experiences and Simulations (ARIES) team in University Libraries at Virginia Tech created an immersive digital experience that allows researchers and the public to explore Hill 80, a German stronghold and trench fortress near Wijtschate, Belgium, captured during the 1917 Battle of Messines.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Tom’s Hardware: GTA Vice City and GTA III return to web browsers after a DMCA takedown — Open-source reverse engineering brings the classics to the web with over 100 FPS performance. “Grand Theft Auto: Vice City has cemented itself as one of the most legendary games of all time. It originally came out in 2002 on the PS2 before making its way to the Xbox and PC a year later. Fast forward to 2026, and now the game is entirely playable in a browser window. It was actually already playable last year on DOS Zone but was quickly shut down following a DMCA strike from Take-Two. However, a different website called ‘Quenq’ has taken up the mantle now, and it also hosts GTA III there.”

AROUND THE SEARCH & SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

New York Times: Crashing a Plane for Clicks: Influencers Push Shock Content to Get Views. “Across the world, aspiring influencers trespass on skyscraper roofs. They block highway traffic. They provoke strangers in grocery stores, airports and malls. They dangle from helicopters, cranes, trains and cliffs for clips lasting only seconds. Some are arrested. Others are hospitalized. And, in tragic cases, some have died. Psychologists who study this field are not surprised.”

The Drive: Google Maps Is Now Terrible: Explained. “Have you noticed that Google Maps (or your navigation app of choice) doesn’t work as well as it used to? Maybe the quickest possible route still isn’t that quick, or those quiet backstreets that used to serve as a clever shortcut are now choked with traffic as well. It’s not your imagination. GPS-based routing apps have gotten worse, and while there is a solution, it might be more trouble than it’s worth.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Easy Reader: Good Stuff Strand Cam ends after 25 years, ‘swatting’ to blame. “For over 25 years Good Stuff restaurant in Hermosa Beach has livestreamed a block of The Strand capturing the daily musings of passing tourists, bikers and 13th street volleyball players to online audiences worldwide. Last week, the Good Stuff Strand Cam was taken down as a safety precaution, according to Cris Bennet, the restaurant’s owner.”

Baltimore Banner: Baltimore pizza shop turns to social media after its card reader was stolen. It worked.. “… the staff looked everywhere after closing. That’s when [Hasan] Ilhan checked the security footage and saw that a group of customers, who had paid for their food, had stolen the device. The group looked young, Ilhan said. Instead of calling the police, the owners decided to try to reach them through social media. Ilhan posted a video on Sunday explaining what happened and asking the Baltimore community for help finding the card reader.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

The New Nation (Bangladesh): 554 heritage sites listed, digital archive planned. “The government has published a list of 554 gazetted immovable archaeological sites and is planning to establish a National Digital Cultural Repository to preserve and provide global access to the country’s cultural heritage. Cultural Affairs Minister Nitai Roy Chowdhury disclosed the plans in Parliament on Monday during the question-and-answer session.”

King’s College London: New report offers lessons for preserving cultural heritage in crisis zones. “The report, Digital heritage preservation for vulnerable collections: Reflections on the Sudan Memory project history and inventory, was authored by Dr Laura Gibson, Senior Lecturer in Digital Content Management Education at King’s, alongside Sara El-Nager, Independent Researcher and Editor, and Dr Hannah Ishmael, Lecturer in Digital Culture & Race. It draws on 14 interviews conducted by Sara El-Nager with contributors to the Sudan Memory project, the first mass digitisation project ever undertaken in Sudan.”

Louisiana Illuminator: America’s air monitors are disappearing, along with the power to expose polluters. “Over recent decades, federal funding for public air monitoring has declined, the number of monitors has fallen, and much of the remaining equipment is aging or located far from major polluters. Now, the stakes are rising: Wildfire smoke is reaching more communities, data centers are adding pollution, and climate-driven heat waves are worsening ozone levels. The Trump administration, meanwhile, has delayed and rolled back requirements meant to hold companies accountable for their emissions.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Clear Creek Courant: Bear-proof trash cans in Downtown Idaho Springs are alive with pictures of local history. “The trash cans in downtown Idaho Springs are barely recognizable, as such, following a city project to incorporate our history on an unlikely canvas…. The historical pictures depict the people, places, and landmarks from a century ago that are the basis of our heritage and how this historic gold mining town was born.” 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.

Little Black Book: This AI-Powered Archive Maps 115 Years of Swedish Political Advertising. “​Propagandaindex is a new digital archive that brings together Swedish election posters from 1911 to the upcoming 2026 parliamentary election. It offers a new way to explore political communication, using AI-assisted analysis to reveal long-term patterns in the language, imagery and tone of more than a century of campaigning.”

NBC News: Declassified CIA documents show clear warnings to presidents before 9/11. “The documents, posted on the CIA’s website, cover the period from February 1998 to Sept. 12, 2001. All are drawn from the daily intelligence briefings that were given by the CIA and other spy agencies to Clinton and his successor, Bush…. The documents, which amount to more than 100 pages, show a steady stream of alarming but imprecise intelligence reports that bin Laden was preparing to attack the United States, either on U.S. soil or at embassies and U.S. military bases abroad. Many of them were heavily redacted.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

TechCrunch: Matt Mullenweg tells (trolls?) Automattic staff, saying he’s back in control after CEO ouster. “Matt Mullenweg has posted a message to Automattic’s Slack, claiming he is back in control as CEO of the WordPress.com parent company, according to a screenshot of the message seen by TechCrunch, which was confirmed by multiple employee sources.”

USEFUL STUFF

Lifehacker: 10 Hacks Every Google Photos User Should Know. “Google Photos doesn’t have to be one of those things that you set up and forget. Despite its initial simplicity, Google Photos is full of settings and features you can configure to make the app work better for you. With these hacks, you can manage a massive photo library, reduce cloud storage, hide pictures of your ex, and disable AI in search.”

AROUND THE SEARCH & SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Vanity Fair: 9/11 Changed the World in Many Ways. It Also Spawned the Digital Media Era. “Revisiting the observations I made back then, and since, it’s clear that subsequent advances in media and technology have changed how we disseminate, manipulate, and believe visual information—and how such breakthroughs have changed terrorism, war, the tactics of autocrats, and of those who oppose them.”

Gizmodo: Never Forget, AI Slop Is Polluting 9/11 History on the Internet as We Speak. “Welles Crowther became known as the Man in the Red Bandana after stories spread about his heroism on September 11, 2001. Now, an AI-generated image purporting to show Crowther rescuing people from the World Trade Center is going viral—the latest example of how fabricated images could distort our collective memory of 9/11 for generations.”

Hromadske: Ukrainian Olympian’s ‘Helmet of Memory’ to become online museum for athletes killed in Russia’s war. “The helmet that Ukrainian skeleton racer Vladyslav Heraskevych wore to honor athletes killed in Russia’s war – and that led to him being barred from competing at the 2026 Winter Olympics – will become the centerpiece of an online museum telling the stories of the 22 people depicted on it.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Cyberscoop: Cyberattack causes a flight delay? Airlines won’t owe you a hotel or meal. “Beginning next month, if a flight is canceled or delayed because of a cyberattack, feds will give airlines clearance not to hand out meal vouchers or hotels. The change is the result of a broader rule the Transportation Department published last week that establishes a new ’cause of delay’ category for tracking information, but that also reduces air carrier responsibilities to customers for 10 kinds of events.”

Reuters: Hidden crypto farm in Mexican mountains puts spotlight on cartel funding. “Crypto mining — which uses powerful computers to generate virtual assets such as bitcoin — represents a new frontier in Mexico’s fight against organized criminal groups, which have extended ​their reach beyond drug trafficking and extortion into the murkier realm of financial crime.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

New York Times: English Museum to Repatriate Colonial-Era Human Remains. “After years of negotiations, a British museum has agreed to return a colonial-era collection of human remains to the Indigenous Naga people of the Indian subcontinent, Naga representatives said on Saturday. The partial remains — a warrior’s cranium, a woman’s skull, a young person’s jaw and many others — have been far from home in the Pitt Rivers Museum at the University of Oxford for over 100 years.”

Denver Post: Mesa Verde National Park to return thousands of Native American artifacts and Indigenous remains to tribes. “Mesa Verde National Park plans to return more than 4,000 sacred Native American objects and the remains of 85 Indigenous people in its possession, marking the largest potential repatriation in the park’s recorded history.”

NASA: NASA Boosts Open Science, Data Sharing with Artemis Accords. “The science from every Moon rock sample, lunar dataset, and discovery produced through NASA’s Artemis program will be shared by the agency with the global scientific community. That commitment is upheld by all 71 countries that have signed the Artemis Accords, a set of principles for safe and transparent civil space exploration.” 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.

Geeks Are Sexy: Egyptologist Fact-Checks AI’s Absolutely Insane Ancient Egypt. “In this video, Egyptologist Professor Laurel Bestock takes on AI-generated ancient Egypt and points out just how much of it is completely wrong. From pyramids wearing giant golden hats to modern mirrors and pharaohs apparently running side hustles, AI has created a version of Egypt that feels more like a fever dream than history.”

DATA CENTERS

Spectrum News: Company looks to build data centers at fairgrounds across California, including Ventura County. “[Rima Muna] and others urged the board to oppose an idea by Orange County based infrastructure company Global Stack. The company is looking to build a data-processing unit the size of a shipping container, a landing area for aircraft, and a parking garage at up to 70 fairgrounds across the state, including in Ventura County.”

Denver Post: Colorado’s largest data center to be built in Weld County after commissioners approve Global AI. “Weld County is set to become the home of Colorado’s largest data center after the commissioners approved a construction permit for Global AI. A day before the commissioners’ approval on Wednesday, the Greeley City Council already set in motion plans to annex the property.”

AI IN EDUCATION

Politico: Teachers union reaches AI privacy deal with Microsoft. “The American Federation of Teachers and Microsoft have reached an agreement establishing privacy and safety protections for the use of artificial intelligence in schools.”

Chronicle of Higher Education: The Ivy League’s Surrender to AI Is Insane. “Are ‘students,’ in fact, anxious about AI? No. Students require no coaxing to hungrily explore AI’s potential. Those who are anxious about AI’s proliferation in education are the philosophers, literary scholars, engineers, biologists, and computer scientists warning that what’s going to render students professionally useless is not a dearth of AI practice but the lack of opportunities for serious AI-free learning. Whether these scholars need a ‘cure’ is something to be established, not assumed.”

AI IN FINANCE

TechCrunch: OpenAI’s Sam Altman says it would be ‘ill-advised’ to go public in 2026. “While OpenAI has filed confidentially for an IPO, the company will not be going public this year, according to CEO Sam Altman.”

AI IN GOVERNANCE

Governor of Nebraska: Gov. Pillen Announces and Encourages Use of AI Chatbot on State Website, Nebraska.gov. “Governor Jim Pillen has announced the addition of a new feature on the state’s primary website – a resident-assistance chatbot. The Nebraska Navigator as it is known, went live on Sept. 1. Installation on the newly designed website marks the second phase of the AI chatbot project, which began as a pilot involving the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV).”

New York Times: San Francisco Mayor Declares Rent Emergency Amid A.I. Housing Frenzy. “Mayor Daniel Lurie of San Francisco on Thursday declared a rent emergency and proposed several actions to combat evictions as residents face a deepening housing crisis amid the A.I. boom.”

AI IN WORK

Variety: Amazon’s Prime Video Is Using AI to Lip-Sync Actors’ Mouths in Dubbed Titles, Starting With German Series ‘Maxton Hall’. “Amazon‘s Prime Video is promising to make English-language dubs look more natural by using AI to sync up the way the actors’ mouths move on screen.”

Publishers Weekly: Ingram’s AI Rollout Is a Success. “Ingram Content Group began rolling out AI across its platforms in May 2025, and just 15 months later, the company’s chief commercial and content officer says it has transformed the way Ingram approaches metadata, advertising, and marketing, while helping accelerate the introduction of new services.”

AROUND THE AI WORLD

Reuters: Finland risks strained power supply after Google AI deal, opposition warns. “Finland ​should introduce a national permitting system for data centres to prevent the risk ‌of power shortages and soaring energy prices, opposition parties said on Thursday following Google’s announcement of a large new investment in the country.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

TechSpot: Dallas garbage trucks are using AI cameras to flag code violations and give homes a “blight score”. “Want another reason why there’s a big pushback against artificial intelligence? In Dallas, AI-powered cameras mounted on trash collection trucks are photographing properties and assigning them a ‘blight score’ – a rating based on perceived code violations. NBC 5 obtained city records showing that Dallas started testing the AI cameras on bulk trash collection trucks in April, ramping up their use over the summer.”

Schneier on Security: AI Agents Are Now Emailing Me with Their Security Concerns. “I received the two emails below earlier in the month. They’re vaguely coherent. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that the corpus that AIs are training on contain data suggesting that I am someone to write to with random computer and network security problems. After all, I observe that behavior in many humans as well. (Hi, humans. Glad you’re still reading.)”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Moravian University: Moravian University Launches AI Lab to Model Ethical Innovation. “Moravian University announced the official launch of its AI Innovation Lab, a hands-on physical and collaborative space where students from any academic discipline can test ideas, learn emerging technologies, and build practical AI tools to address real-world challenges.”

North Carolina State University: Study Suggests AI-Generated Images Could Support Conservation, but Real-World Data Remains Essential. “New research finds there is no substitute for real-world observations, but that — under the right circumstances — AI-generated images can be used to improve the performance of computer models used for species identification and biodiversity monitoring.” 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.

What The Fran: 121 Blaugust posts. “I visited the Blaugust participants and these are my favourite blog posts from the second half of the month, following up from 132 Blaugust posts. A bunch of them are end of August wrap-up types because I’m always interested. Sadly I only read English so for the blogs in other languages I’ve tried to link something cool. Otherwise they, and other blogs that 404ed or didn’t have new posts, etc, are at the end of this list.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Search Engine Land: The big winners and losers in U.S. website traffic over the past year. “Google Analytics 4 (GA4) became mandatory on July 1, 2023, when standard Universal Analytics properties stopped processing new data. Less than a year later, on May 14, 2024, Google began rolling out AI Overviews to U.S. users. The timing matters: The industry lost a clean, comparable measurement baseline just as search traffic patterns started to shift. So, over the past 12 months, who gained website traffic in the U.S., and who lost it?”

The Register: The search company that plants trees just launched a Linux browser to help Europe battle big tech. “Berlin-based eco-conscious search outfit Ecosia is expanding its range of European-focused web browsers to include a Linux version, citing the growing number of users in the EU looking for open alternatives to the clutches of American tech giants.”

AROUND THE SEARCH & SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

PetaPixel: Vimeo Can Decide To Change Your Plan and Force You to Pay 5x More. “This new Studio subscription came to PetaPixel‘s attention because of a discussion on Threads, the origin of which has since been deleted for factual inaccuracies, about a huge Vimeo price hike. While some details weren’t quite correct, the basic complaint was: Vimeo determined the user was no longer eligible for an individual plan and needed to be moved to the new, much pricier Studio tier.”

NPR: Elon Musk threatens to sue over Gibney documentary’s “space lasers” claim. “Elon Musk has in recent days been targeting his ire at filmmaker Alex Gibney, whose forthcoming documentary, Musk, offers a scathing look at the tech mogul’s rise. Now, a lawyer for Musk is threatening to file a defamation lawsuit ahead of the film’s release next month.”

Axios: Scoop: TikTok rejects Meta ads amid settlement pressure campaign. “TikTok has rejected ads from Meta that call on TikTok and other tech platforms to join Meta in settling with U.S. state attorneys general in a landmark children’s safety lawsuit, sources told Axios…. Part of Meta’s historic multibillion-dollar settlement is contingent on its peers also agreeing to settle. Other tech firms have yet to publicly comment on their plans.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Gizmodo: Man Arrested After Showing Up at Police Station With a Truck Full of Flock Cameras. “A New Mexico man, 44-year-old Jevon Martinez, took down 10 Flock camera systems himself on Wednesday, according to the Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office (BCSO). Martinez livestreamed himself taking down at least one of the cameras, which he called ‘tyranny trees.’ In the stream, he also showed the back of his pickup truck filled with several other cameras.”

Ars Technica: LinkedIn beats “BrowserGate” lawsuits over scanning users’ Chrome extensions. “LinkedIn beat two lawsuits over its practice of scanning users’ browser extensions, with a judge granting the Microsoft subsidiary’s motion to dismiss the cases. The users who sued LinkedIn failed to adequately allege that they have standing to sue because neither asserted that they ‘had browser extensions installed that conveyed private information to LinkedIn,’ ruled Judge Vince Chhabria in US District Court for the Northern District of California.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Northeastern University: The secret knitting society designing blankets and clothing with data. “Deep within the underbellies of online forums and social media sites, a global network of passionate knitters, crocheters, sewists and stitchers are quietly pioneering a bespoke form of data visualization, conveying complex statistical ideas through artistic handmade crafts.”

The Observer: Heritage and Research Center begins archival work. “The Heritage and Research Center has completed renovations along the Avenue and has begun receiving archival collections from 10 congregations — focusing on Catholic religious women. The center, which began as an idea discussed among congregations in 2018, is now transitioning from construction into the process of preserving, organizing and making the collections available to students, researchers and the public.” 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.

NEW RESOURCES

New York Times: Voters Are Asking A.I. About Elections. The Answers Can Vary by User.. “Now the M.I.T. researchers are comparing how nearly a dozen large language models responded to a fixed group of questions about prominent midterm candidates and political issues. The team is also evaluating how the responses vary based on who claims to be asking (calibrating for gender, race, location or political leaning). For nearly a month so far, the researchers have regularly run automated sweeps of all the possible combinations of prompts and identities — 19,000 separate queries each time. They designed a public dashboard called the LLM Election Observatory for tracking how the A.I. models are responding.”

Discovered on LinkedIn: the Indigenous Collections Care Guide. “The Indigenous Collections Care Guide provides a framework to respect and recenter collections stewardship practices around the needs and knowledge of Native American and Indigenous community members.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Engadget: You can now plan IRL events on Snapchat . “Snapchat is getting a very old-school social media feature: event planning. Called ‘Snapchat Plans’ the app is trying to foster IRL gatherings of its users with new tools to organize meetups of up to 200 people directly in the app.”

TechSpot: Google appears to be done with tablets, again. “It seems that Google has decided to call it a day when it comes to making tablets. Just three years after it was introduced, the Pixel Tablet, Google’s only remaining tablet model, has been removed from its store. The tech giant has erased its entire Tablets section from the storefront, so it appears we won’t see another Pixel Tablet from Google for a long time, if ever.”

USEFUL STUFF

How-To Geek: What is JSONC and is it any better than JSON?. “JSON has become a near-ubiquitous data format, used in API responses, save game files, and configuration. But many people feel it can be better, and various attempts have been made to expand or improve it. JSONC is one of those attempts.” Trailing commas in JSON have gotten me more than once.

MakeUseOf: I ditched online file converters for a Docker container with 1,000+ formats. “For the longest time, I’d relied on online file converters for all those quick conversion needs. As someone working with various types of media, I found an additional tab in my web browser convenient. However, I wouldn’t rely on these sketchy file-conversion websites nowadays, knowing the serious privacy concerns they pose. At the same time, I like the idea of opening a new tab to convert a file. A Docker container I came across recently, namely ConvertX, solved this problem for good!”

AROUND THE SEARCH & SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Dazed: We’re living through an explainer epidemic. “These days, there’s an explainer video for every topic you can imagine, and swarms of thinkfluencers – often armed with tiny mics – popping up left, right and centre. Some have a niche…. Others post their hottest takes in front of a green screen or sell DIY business strategies on Substack. Like everything on the internet, much of it is highly researched, and much of it is not – such is the nature of algorithmic culture, which rewards volume.”

Politico: Putin’s bot army is targeting German and French elections, Sweden warns. “Russia poses a threat to upcoming elections in Europe’s biggest democracies and social media platforms must ‘step up’ the fight against Moscow’s networks of bots, Sweden’s disinformation defense chief has warned.”

Playboy: People Are Buying Facebook Beef to Avoid “Mystery Meat”. “As a Chicagoan, ‘local beef’ usually refers to a fight with a neighbor over a parking spot, sports team, or hot dog condiments. Now, with food recalls happening seemingly every other day, reported government-sanctioned sales of wild horses to slaughterhouses, and President Donald Trump’s recent effort to lower beef prices, the term has taken on a more nutritious meaning. I never thought I would consider driving over an hour to buy ground beef on Facebook Marketplace, but in 2026, it sounds like a safer gamble than buying it on Amazon for $1.99 a pound.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Associated Press: Nearly a decade after the Cambridge Analytica scandal, New Mexico alone is taking Facebook to trial. “Attorneys representing the state of New Mexico told jurors that targeted political ads, attempting to lower Democratic turnout during the 2016 election, used Facebook data sold to a political consulting firm, during opening statements in a trial over the platform’s data protections.”

Ohio Capital Journal: Kentucky courts filing system part of ‘cybersecurity incident,’ judicial branch officials say. “The Kentucky Administrative Office of the Courts said the system used for files for the Kentucky Supreme Court and Court of Appeals ‘experienced a cybersecurity incident.’ AOC said it was notified by the company Thomson Reuters Court Management Solutions about the incident within the company’s C-Track system files. The company said an unauthorized third party accessed and obtained court data from multiple states, including Kentucky Appellate Court data.”

Reuters: Texas judge rules TikTok misled users on child safety feature. “A Texas judge ruled on Thursday that TikTok violated the state’s consumer protection law by misleading users ​about how it filtered content for minors and ‌whether its ‘Restricted Mode’ feature shielded children from inappropriate material.” 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.

BFBS Forces News: Forgotten no more: Search the stories of 12,500 Coastal Command heroes lost in WW2. “The Coastal Command Losses Database was officially launched at the International Bomber Command Centre (IBCC) in Lincoln this week, bringing together what is believed to be the first truly comprehensive record of Coastal Command losses…. Described as the Royal Air Force’s ‘Cinderella Service’, it was often overlooked in favour of the better-known Bomber and Fighter Commands. Yet its work was fundamental to the Allied war effort, protecting vital sea lanes, hunting German U-boats, escorting Allied convoys and attacking enemy shipping.”

WZZM: Michigan State Police opens new database for 200 cold cases. “Michigan State Police (MSP) is launching a website highlighting unsolved crimes that have gone cold. September is National Cold Case Month and state police are hoping to bring attention to unresolved homicides, missing and unidentified persons and serial offenses.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

MediaPost: Google Search Introduces Live NFL Game Feed. “Google added a live National Football League game feed to search on Wednesday, allowing fans and spectators to follow along with game developments as they unfold on the field.”

Mashable: TikTok is bringing voice notes to the comment section. “TikTok’s comment section is about to get a lot more chaotic. The platform is rolling out a slate of new ways to interact beneath videos, including voice comments, polls, photo carousels, and Live Photos. The four new features expand what users can post beyond text and single image replies, giving TikTok’s famously active comment sections even more ways to become part of the content itself.”

AROUND THE SEARCH & SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

The Wrap: Creatorverse: NFL Is Doubling Down on Creators as the US Open Struggles. “The NFL’s creator strategy has become a central part of its audience expansion efforts in recent years, especially as the NFL has made moves to expand its female and non-American audiences. Last year’s Creator of the Week program led to more than 86 million views across all YouTube and NFL channels. And this year creators are especially important as the NFL will have nine international games throughout the 2026-2027 season — the most in the league’s history.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Fightful: Ric Flair Suing FAM Networks, Claims He Was Duped By Influencer Talent Agency. “Ric Flair is suing FAM Networks, an influencer talent agency that Flair claims duped him into signing away the rights to his own image and likeness while promising him a six-figure monthly revenue stream that allegedly never materialized.”

Reuters: Macron urges EU ban on social media for under-15s in letter to Von der Leyen. “French President Emmanuel Macron has urged the European Commission to back a European Union-wide ban on social media ​for children under 15 after France failed to enact its own legislation, his ‌office said on Tuesday.”

BBC: Australians will be able to switch off social media algorithms under planned legislation. “Australians would be able to switch off social media algorithms under draft legislation to be proposed this week. Communications Minister Anika Wells, who last year helmed the government’s world-first social media ban for under-16s, said the digital duty of care laws would ensure ‘some basic safety protections on an industry that hasn’t had to observe it’.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

The Conversation: Receipts, memes and supermarket shelves: how Iranians are documenting the economic cost of war online. “On Iranian social media, everyday items are being used to illustrate rampant inflation. Videos juxtapose the purchasing power of the same amount of money from one or two years ago with its current value. People capture supermarket shelves, photograph receipts, and make jokes about products that have become unaffordable for their households. These posts are more than just complaints about rising prices. Collectively, they are forming an unofficial cost-of-living diary of a nation under significant economic strain.”

University of Central Florida: UCF Researchers Receive NEH Grant to Preserve Noah Webster’s Dictionaries Online. “Researchers in UCF’s Department of English and Center for Humanities and Digital Research (CHDR) are slated to receive nearly $350,000 from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) to create searchable digital editions of Webster’s historic dictionaries, giving scholars, educators and the public unprecedented access to foundational texts that helped shape American English.” 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.