India Today: Atomberg creates India-wide map of water quality, anyone can check TDS with PIN code. “The trick? Atomberg is using data collected from sensors in its RO machines and after anonymising this data is allowing anyone to search it using a PIN code. The result? Through the Atomberg water quality tool, anyone can go to their website, use a PIN code and get the quality of water in their area, complete with overall water rating and TDS level.”

Azernews: Gilavar Photo Club presents digital archive project for country’s heritage sites. “Currently, the website contains information on more than 200 historical, architectural, and archaeological monuments across nine regions of Azerbaijan, along with over 2,600 photographs.”

Google Blog: Explore Colonial Williamsburg with Google Arts & Culture. “This year marks a monumental milestone: the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States of America. To celebrate this moment, The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation and Google Arts & Culture have partnered on a new project that pulls back the curtain on early American history. It makes the varied daily realities of the 18th-century colonial capital accessible to anyone, anywhere in the world.”

Found in my Calishat Snaps: CycleArchive.com. From the About page: “This project began because I kept stumbling across fascinating old cycling magazines in dusty corners of the internet and university libraries — titles from the 1860s through to the 1940s, back when bicycles were still called ‘wheels’ and people were genuinely unsure whether this whole cycling thing would catch on.”

USEFUL STUFF

AllAboutKen: Eye-tracking heatmaps in your browser, no lab needed. “Stop guessing whether users will notice your CTA. Foveacast predicts attention from a screenshot, entirely in your browser, nothing uploaded.”

AROUND THE SEARCH & SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

MakeUseOf: 6 search engines that find the internet that Google forgot. “To discover those quaint little corners of the internet that don’t make it onto page one of Google, I tried these lesser-known search engines, and what I discovered was a completely different internet.”

Brennan Day: Floating Up: An Interview with the creator of Bubbles.town, Benjamin Behnke. “Think Hacker News or Reddit, but exclusively for the indie blogosphere. You sign in with a Fediverse account to vote, and posts bubble up based on community upvotes combined with recency. It has categories like Writing, Tech, Culture, Life, Science, History, Gaming, etc., and recently added a daily ‘Briefing’ that presents top posts in a newspaper-style format.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

The Hill: House unveils bipartisan kids online safety deal. “House lawmakers announced a bipartisan deal on a package for protecting kids online on Monday, months after negotiations on digital and social media regulation fell apart between the two parties.”

Reuters: India ‘proactively monitoring’ Telegram over concerns about illegal content, government report shows. “An Indian investigation found that Telegram is being used extensively to ​share child sexual abuse material and perpetrate financial scams, according to a report by the government, which ‌added it was ‘proactively monitoring’ groups on the messaging app.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Sameoldstory.co: I’ve “gone viral” before and I don’t recommend it!. “Occasionally people will read my post, assume I made that point I just described, and argue about how just because you’re old enough to remember the moon landing doesn’t make you an expert on politics, or fashion, or television or whatever. Which I totally agree with, but they’re misreading me. It’s not even misreading, really. The post has escaped me too, and it represents its own idea now, as a meme. It’s got my face and name on it though, so it’s hard not to feel a kind of way about it.”

WTVR: New tool helps Alzheimer’s families find clinical trials. “The Alzheimer’s Disease Registry Initiative, known as ADRI, is a virtual research platform that connects people with Alzheimer’s or dementia and their caregivers to researchers. The goal is to match patients with clinical trials to accelerate breakthroughs in Alzheimer’s treatment.”

JMIR Publications: The Future of Online Misinformation Research: Tackling the Landscape With Integrity and Urgency. “Since early 2025, the scientific research and funding landscape has faced tremendous changes and challenges in the United States. In this News and Perspectives article, health communication scholar, former program official of the National Cancer Institute, and JMIR Correspondent Wen-Ying Sylvia Chou discusses the impact on—and future of—online misinformation research in this politicized context.” 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.

McGill University: Digitization of centuries of Canadian weather records promises to improve climate understanding. “Researchers have uncovered and digitized nearly two million 18th and 19th century weather observations from across Canada that offer new insights into how the country’s climate has changed over time. The international project draws on handwritten records dating from 1768 to 1884. The data include temperature, precipitation, wind and detailed descriptions of such events as storms and floods.”

The Verge: The Atlantic created a searchable database of the music used to train AI. “Atlantic reporter Alex Reisner recently uncovered four datasets of music being used to train AI models and made them fully searchable for the public. Two of the sets are absolutely enormous at 12 million and 9 million tracks. The other two are much smaller, but still represent a significant amount of training data at over 100,000 songs each.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Bubbles Blog: Introducing Bubbles Briefing . “So here it is: Bubbles Briefing. A finite edition of the top posts on Bubbles, published once a day at 06:00 Europe/Berlin. Same view for everybody. When you reach the end, you’re done. There’s no page 2.”

PressGazette: Biggest UK local newsbrands: Reach sites worst hit after Google algorithm changes. “The majority of the UK’s largest local news websites have seen a decline in audience and minutes spent with their content in the past year, according to Ipsos iris data. Among the 75 biggest local news titles in the UK, just 16 grew their audience year on year in April while 15 increased the monthly time spent on their platforms.”

USEFUL STUFF

Coywolf: AI Alt Text for the Fediverse: Chrome extension for generating image alt text on Mastodon. “A privacy-first Chrome extension (Manifest V3) that adds an AI alt-text button to the Mastodon web composer (any instance, including self-hosted). When you open the image description (alt-text) modal, the extension can send the image to Anthropic’s Claude API — using your own API key — and autofill a concise, screen-reader-friendly description that follows established alt-text accessibility best practices.” This extension is currently undergoing review for inclusion in the Chrome Web store.

AROUND THE SEARCH & SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Futbol Chronicle: Fake Photos and AI Crowds Have Turned the World Cup Into an Information War. “He was an electrician, some said. A bus driver who played football on the weekends, said others. It was a beautiful story, the amateur who walked off a building site to stun a superpower, and it was shared hundreds of thousands of times. It was also completely false.”

SouthPole Blog: Why Artists Are Running Their Own Data Centers. “There is a server humming in Linz, Austria, that has quietly hosted net art, free software experiments, and community broadcasts since the mid-1990s. It belongs to servus.at, a cultural association that treats infrastructure the way other artist collectives treat darkrooms or kilns: as a medium. In 2024 they published a small book, Artists Running Data Centers, edited by Davide Bevilacqua: 96 pages, English, ISBN 978-3950420036.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Tom’s Hardware: Acoustic mapping app uses thousands of networked old Android phones to hunt Shahed drones — crowd-sourced microphone network spots small, low-RCS military targets. “A Lithuanian startup developed an Android app that lets verified users monitor the general area for the acoustic signature of Shahed-type drones used by Russia to strike targets and report their approximate location. According to state broadcaster Lithuanian National Radio and Television, the app uses an embedded algorithm to isolate and analyze targets from environmental noise.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Kirsten the Librarian: The Big List of Google Scholar Alternatives (and the Big Librarian Existential Crisis). “I started writing this in summer of last year, intending it to be a nice little list of tools that would be handy if Google Scholar disappeared or got substantially worse, as a follow up to my LSE Impact blog post.[1] The more I wrote the more I realised that I needed to caveat all my recommendations, and that actually those caveats are the important bit. As time went on that developed into a full-blown existential crisis over, amongst other things, the dependence of the academic knowledge system on profoundly unethical companies and the precarity of information infrastructure.”

David Bushell: Google just spat in my face. “AI peddlers like Google have made one thing abundantly clear: their product will take your skills. It will take your profession. It will dehumanise you and you’ll pay for it.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Hackaday: When A Favicon Becomes The Entire Website. “Putting hidden data in places where few expect it can be a fun hobby or even a professional career. In the case of [Tim Wehrle] it’s just the former. His most recent project in this area uses a favicon image for storing a HTML-based website and rendering its contents within the browser after the favicon has been downloaded.” 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.

Rural Jersey: Two Centuries Of Jersey’s Rural History Now Just A Click Away!. “The Royal Jersey Agricultural and Horticultural Society (RJA&HS) has launched a new digital archive… The archive, available on the Society’s website, contains more than 15,000 historic images and documents, including annual reports, magazines, newsletters, photographs and records documenting the Island’s agricultural and horticultural life from the 1830s to today.”

Northwest Georgia News: Walker County Messenger archive opens window to past . “Ready for a trip through local history? Now you can explore more than 7,400 issues of the Walker County Messenger, from 1880 through 2025, and see everything from hometown headlines to vintage ads with prices that might make you do a double take.”

Big Island Now: State releases first comprehensive children, youth fiscal map. “The fiscal map examines state, federal and federal relief funding dedicated to children and youth ages 0 to 24 years old during fiscal years 2019 through 2023. The analysis provides a detailed look at how public investments support specific outcomes, services, age groups and populations throughout Hawaiʻi.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Harvard Graduate School of Education: Black Teacher Archive Launches Revamped Website. “The Black Teacher Archive (BTA) announced the launch of a new website featuring a number of new ways to share and highlight its growing collection in the classroom and beyond.”

Search Engine Roundtable: Bing Tests Updated News Design In Search. “Microsoft Bing is testing a new updated design for the news section within Bing Search. The updated news box, honestly, is easier to understand and makes it clearer that these are news sources – so I kind of like it.”

AROUND THE SEARCH & SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Indy: After Local Drag Queen and Business Owner Banned From Instagram, More Questions Than Answers. “Community members, including Drag Queen Stormie Daie and Durham County Commissioner Nida Allam, have called on Instagram users to tag Meta in posts asking the company to reinstate [Naomi] Dix’s accounts. While Meta did not supply Dix with a reason for the ban, the posts it flagged—one of which was from a year ago—included an image of a shirtless dancer and a harness strapped to a person’s chest, with accompanying text advertising a queer kink party and drag show.”

The Register: Telegram founder accuses Meta of sabotaging access in India with BGP hijacks. “The founder of Telegram, Pavel Durov, has suggested Meta might be using its investment in Indian telco Jio to sabotage the messaging service. Durov dropped his theory on X, writing: ‘Indian telecom Reliance is sabotaging access to Telegram for millions of users OUTSIDE India (including the UAE) via a rogue method called BGP hijacking.'”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Mashable: Older iPhones are vulnerable to a flaw Apple likely can’t fix. “The issue exists within SecureROM, the code that runs when an iPhone turns on, which is embedded in certain chips. Apple can’t fix these flaws, as the code can’t be extracted from the chips.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Tech.eu: Ukraine launches TrophyLab, turning captured Russian weapons into a battlefield R&D platform. “Since the beginning of the full-scale war, Ukrainian military personnel, scientific institutions, and research centres have been analysing captured equipment. They study components, technological solutions, and vulnerabilities to develop effective countermeasures more quickly. That knowledge is now being made available to those working to strengthen defence capabilities.” 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.

Mountain Journal: How Some Montanans are Taking Data Center Regulation Into Their Own Hands. “In Montana, where the state offers little in the way of oversight, citizen-led initiatives in Butte-Silver Bow and Yellowstone counties are forging a potentially new regulatory path: a grassroots approach that, if successful, would put the power to approve new or expanded data centers in the hands of voters.”

Ithaca Voice: Petition opposing Lansing AI data center garners over 20,000 signatures. “A proposed data center in Lansing has met its latest wave of backlash this week after over 20 thousand people signed a petition against the development.”

DATA CENTERS

Planet Detroit: Google data center in Van Buren Township would destroy 13 acres of wetlands. “Michigan regulators are reviewing a wetland permit for Google’s planned data center in Van Buren Township, which would destroy 13.55 acres of wetlands in a county that has already lost 90% of them to development.”

Cleveland.com: Fire chief concerned about emergency planning for data center power plants. “If something goes wrong at a power plant being built next to an Amazon data center outside Columbus, Norwich Township firefighters will be the first to respond. But Fire Chief David Baird hasn’t seen or been allowed to see or help develop American Electric Power’s emergency response plans.”

Nevada Current: Las Vegas data center expansion approved as officials ponder need for future regulations. “The Clark County Commission, in its capacity as the zoning board, unanimously approved a proposal to expand the largest data center campus in Southern Nevada on Wednesday, but not without adjustments and acknowledging the need for future data center regulations.”

AI IN GOVERNANCE

Ars Technica: Pentagon boasts of using AI to write reports mandated by Congress. “The US Department of Defense has a lot of congressionally mandated homework to do every year involving hundreds of required reports on various national security topics. But Pentagon officials have been proudly describing a new shortcut—using generative AI tools to write such reports for Congress.”

The Oaklandside: Who’s behind the AI-generated social media posts targeting Oakland’s mayor?. “The website and social media account allude to alleged scandals in the mayor’s past and lay blame for virtually all the city’s problems on her while posting AI-generated images depicting Lee in imagined scenarios, dining on lobster in a German mountain resort and drinking champagne with a local businessman who was indicted on corruption charges last year.”

The Baltimore Banner: AI put Wes Moore and Dan Cox in a very unlikely — possibly illegal — embrace. “Maryland Gov. Wes Moore and his Republican rival Dan Cox have never hugged, and definitely not in the State House. But a fake image circulating on social media shows the two men in a warm embrace in the Governor’s Reception Room. Cox, facing the camera, is grinning. Moore’s eyes are closed.”

AI IN WORK

Workday Magazine: FOIA Documents Show “Intrusive” AI System is Monitoring Rochester Bus Drivers. “Documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request show that bus drivers for Rochester, Minn., are being monitored by ‘artificial intelligence’ technology for alleged actions like distracted driving and running red lights, and at least one city official acknowledged the system feels ‘intrusive’ to workers.”

AROUND THE AI WORLD

Search Engine Land: USA Today vs. Google AI Overviews: A World Cup battle for breaking news traffic. “USA Today Co. is using AI-assisted shell files to publish breaking sports coverage faster. The strategy is designed to capture search traffic before Google’s AI Overviews summarize the news. The publisher tested the approach during the 2026 Winter Olympics and is now using it for coverage of the 2026 FIFA World Cup, Digiday reported.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Reuters: Trump administration backs Musk’s xAI in NAACP data center lawsuit. “President Donald Trump’s administration has asked a federal judge to block ​an NAACP lawsuit over emissions tied to data centers ‌powering Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company xAI, in a case the government said pits executive power against limits on citizen enforcement of environmental laws.”

Courthouse News Service: Investors sue Adobe execs over AI copyright statements. “A group of investors claim Tuesday Adobe executives didn’t fully disclose the software company’s prioritization of artificial intelligence and the risks involved in training and utilizing generative AI.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

BBC: ChatGPT can be made to generate sexualised and violent images, researchers find. “The latest public version of ChatGPT can be made to generate sexualised images or depict scenes of graphic violence with a simple prompt, researchers have told the BBC. British AI security startup Mindgard figured out how to make ChatGPT create graphic pictures by slightly altering a widely-shared instruction, or prompt, which was originally designed to produce humorous results.”

Missouri S&T: Missouri S&T researcher combines lessons from ants and birds to improve AI. “One of the approaches, known as ant colony optimization, is inspired by the way ants collectively find the most efficient routes to food. The other, called particle swarm optimization, draws inspiration from the way birds and other groups share information and adjust their behavior based on successful neighbors.”

Mashable: Report: AI can perpetuate anti-LGBTQ hate. “AI has stoked many fears: The demise of entire industries, mass exploitation of vulnerable online denizens, a widespread crisis of literacy and critical thinking. Included in that long list is the fear that these systems can reinforce discrimination and bias levied against already marginalized groups. And according to a new report from LGBTQ nonprofit GLAAD, it’s already a problem.” 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.

Another blog finder/explorer that showed up in my RSS feeds: Minifeed. From the About page: “Minifeed is a curated blog directory, reader, and search engine. The goal is to collect blogs written by real humans, make them discoverable and searchable. Minifeed is created and maintained by Rakhim.”

NYS Music: New York Philharmonic Launches Rebuilt Shelby White & Leon Levy Digital Archives. “The New York Philharmonic Orchestra recently launched an overhaul of its Shelby White & Leon Levy Digital Archives to make more of its rich history available to the general public…. The most significant new additions to the archive collection are 552 marked scores and 4,728 marked orchestral parts, which represent the biggest increase in this category since 2017.”

Found in my Calishat Snaps: LinXiv. “Discover, manage, and visualize academic papers from arXiv — run your library on hardware you control, with a modern desktop app, optional AI, Obsidian integration, and an interactive network graph.”

Hot Press: Van Morrison launches live concert archive. “Van Morrison has unveiled The Concert Vault, an online archive of his recent gigs. Launched as part of a redesigned website, the Concert Vault is a new way for fans to experience the Belfast rocker’s live performances.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Cloudflare: Celebrating 12 years of Project Galileo. “Twelve years ago this month, Cloudflare launched an ambitious project built on a simple idea: people shouldn’t be knocked offline just because someone more powerful disagrees with them. Today, Project Galileo provides free access to cybersecurity services to more than 3,400 websites belonging to journalists, human rights defenders, and other nonprofit organizations in 120 countries.”

USEFUL STUFF

Spotted in my RSS feeds: the Mastodon NotifyBot. From the front page: “NotifyBot watches Mastodon hashtags and DMs you when new posts appear, so you never miss the conversations that matter. NotifyBot is best for niche or low-traffic hashtags — the ones that slip past your timeline.”

AROUND THE SEARCH & SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Wall Street Journal: They looked like they were getting rich on Polymarket—but none of it was real. This link goes to an MSN-syndicated version of the article which has no paywall. “[George] Makihara, who declined to comment, is one of dozens of mostly college-age creators Polymarket paid to film themselves making fake trades and sometimes scoring fake wins, according to an analysis of more than 1,100 videos by the Journal, along with instructional materials and interviews with creators who have worked with the company. On Polymarket’s actual site, more than 50 accounts made the McDonald’s bet in January, public data shows. All of them lost.”

The Privacy Dad’s Blog: Interview with the Engineer of Uruky, a Private Search Engine. “Bruno reached out to me mid-April with a suggestion to check out his privacy-first search engine tool Uruky. Uruky works on a subscription model, but one of my kids and I were able to test it out for free for a couple of months.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

McMaster University: Stalked online, ignored offline: Report examines support for survivors of digital harm. “Maureen’s ex installed microphones in the vents of her house to listen in on her conversations. He placed GPS trackers on her car and sent virus-infected emails to her friend’s workplace. He stalked their children online. Their daughter’s bank card was compromised. But when Maureen tried to let the police know, they didn’t do much, even though there was already a protection order in place. Abuse in online and digital spaces simply wasn’t on their radar in terms of effective enforcement.”

Web3 Is Going Just Great: Thief steals remaining 7,200 unsold The Kiss NFTs in digital museum heist. “The stolen NFTs were soon made even less appealing to prospective buyers when the museum un-linked the image files from the digital assets, and OpenSea blocked them from trading.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Hackaday: An In-Browser Visualizer For GPS Satellites. “The visualizer runs right in the browser, and displays a cluster of GPS satellites in a 3D view around the Earth. The tool also offers a list of satellites and related data, including signal-to-noise ratio of the received signals from each one, and the ability to play back satellite positions from previous days.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

New York Times: The Ageless and Undefeated Champs of Tulsa’s Wii Bowling League. This link goes to a gift article. “When the Okies first joined the city league more than a decade ago, they didn’t win a single match, said Cecelia Basarich, 83, a former University Village resident and player. They began studying the techniques of more successful teams and practiced on dusty Wii consoles resurrected from some of their children’s garages. Residents organized an in-house league that competed for 100 Grand candy bars. Now, the team has 40 players some seasons, who compete internally for eight spots for each week’s league game.” 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.

EIN Presswire: Old Courthouse Heritage Museum Creates Free Digital Archive of Artifacts (PRESS RELEASE). “The Old Courthouse Heritage Museum recently digitized 6,938 artifacts for easy, public access to historical resources. The digital archive is available for free on the courthouse website, http://www.cccourthouse.org, under the ‘Archives’ tab on the homepage.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

DJ Mag: Rave Preservation Project expands electronic music archive with new directory and discovery tools. “Rave Preservation Project, the online archive dedicated to documenting global rave culture, has launched a new directory, as well as discovery tools in order to improve the user experience…. Founded in 2013 by Oregon-based archivist Matthew Johnson, Rave Preservation Project is a digital archive that contains over 40,000 items of rave memorabilia, including flyers, posters, and artwork.”

The Register: Firefox 152 understands ‘Sssh!’. “Firefox 152 is now available for download, after no fewer than four minor point releases to its predecessor, last month’s Firefox 151. And quieting noisy tabs has never been easier.”

AROUND THE SEARCH & SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

TechSpot: The rise of “dopamine sites”: fake food delivery and shopping apps that satisfy cravings without spending a cent. “Simply mimicking the act of scrolling through a menu, dropping something into a shopping cart, and tapping the ‘place order’ button is enough to elicit the sense of satisfaction that comes with ordering takeout.”

The Wrap: Why Snapchat Is Hollywood’s Under-the-Radar Pipeline to Gen Z | Analysis. “Snapchat has a line to the demo like few other platforms. During the first quarter, the company reported having 956 million global monthly active users, a 5% year-over-year lift. More than 38% of Snapchat’s users fall between the ages of 18 and 24, while users 24 years or older make up less than 42% of the app’s user base.”

France24: How armed groups in Colombia are using TikTok to recruit young people. “As Colombia’s conflict has intensified in recent years, armed groups have flooded social media like TikTok with videos aimed at getting new recruits – particularly young people. The FRANCE 24 Observers team investigated the inner workings of this new recruitment method.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

The Register: Cyber offenses now account for around a third of all crime across Asia and South Pacific. “Interpol’s latest ASP Cyberthreat Assessment Report states that online scams and phishing attacks dominate cybercrime in the region. Data taken from 2024-2025 shows that phishing campaigns have matured beyond the spray-and-pray mass emails of yesteryear and now resemble the more sophisticated techniques deployed elsewhere in the world.”

ProPublica: “Digital Colonialism”: U.S. Demands to Access Africans’ Data Raise Privacy, Sovereignty Concerns. “Frank Ssekamwa says the United States presented his country with an impossible choice. If it accepted the terms of a new health agreement, Uganda would have to give the U.S. access to the data of millions of his fellow citizens — a decision he worries would make their personal information more vulnerable to breaches and possible exploitation. But if it refused, the East African nation would likely lose out on more than a billion dollars to address HIV, malaria, tuberculosis and other illnesses, even as its people face ongoing threats from Ebola and other deadly infectious diseases.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Lonely Star: How I Use Google Sheets for My Games. “Weird Writer said that I should make a post on how I do spreadsheets, as she thinks I might have something valuable to say on the subject (bless her). I don’t think I do anything too crazy with them, but considering a lot of people have been asking me about my sheets for my Arden Vul campaign which I post occasionally, I figured why not consolidate whatever advice I can give in one place.”

Nate Meyvis: Google’s Dreambeans app. “Using this app feels a bit like making small talk with a colleague who’s trying to show interest in your life by keyword-matching things they once heard you say against a list of things that are on their radar. Such ‘suggestions’ tend to be irrelevant at best or, if not, an attempt to impose their value system onto you. That feels bad.” 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.

The Decoder: Website “In the Weights” shows whether AI models know who you are. “Those ‘weights’ are billions of numerical values where AI models encode their knowledge. If you show up in them, the model considered you relevant enough during training to recall without tools like web search. The site queries several models to figure out who a specific person is, combines the results, and assigns a strength score.”

A blog post from Language Hat pointed me toward a newish (launched earlier this year) web directory that’s been organizing the small/vintage web: Early Web Links. From the About page: “I don’t think the personal web is dead. It’s just scattered and hidden. Early Web Links is my attempt to do something about that. It crawls the web looking for personal, independent, and handmade websites and collects them into a browsable directory, the way the web used to work. Yahoo had a directory. DMOZ had a directory. GeoCities had neighborhood pages. Those are mostly gone now, but the need for them hasn’t gone away. If anything, it’s gotten bigger.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

TechCrunch: After unveiling ridiculously expensive AR glasses, Snap’s stock takes a dive. “Snap’s long-awaited AR glasses, Specs, didn’t have the best debut. The company’s stock hasn’t been on the healthiest trajectory lately. It’s dropped 30% over the past year. Following Specs’ launch, it sank more than 5% — falling from $5.86 a share on Tuesday to a low of $4.83 on Wednesday morning. As of this writing, the stock still hasn’t recovered the position it held prior to the announcement.”

AROUND THE SEARCH & SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Vietnam.vn: For the first time, a portal and database of Vietnamese KOLs (Key Opinion Leaders) is available.. “In the context of a booming content creation economy , the emergence of tens of thousands of KOLs and KOCs presents significant challenges regarding moderation and transparency. To address this issue, for the first time in Vietnam, the KOL Information Portal & Database has officially launched.” The site is in Vietnamese. Every time I tried to use Chrome to translate it to English the site crashed. Just FYI.

National Library of Finland: Bring The Heat! – Let’s Preserve Sauna Culture To The National Collection. “The National Library of Finland’s thematic web harvest preserves sauna related web materials to the web archive. Harvest focuses on Finnish sauna culture, events and communities in the year 2026. We welcome suggestions for websites and videos. We welcome not only suggestions about official sites, but also all kinds of ephemeral online content, for example from social media.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Courthouse News Service: Berkeley professor seeks expedited release of ICE data. “A federal judge questioned Thursday why a law professor needs expedited access to years of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement data as he builds a project tracking immigration and detention trends.”

Spokesman-Review: WA Supreme Court upholds $35M fine against Meta. “A split Washington state Supreme Court on Thursday upheld both Washington’s bedrock campaign finance law and a more than $35 million fine against Meta for repeatedly violating that law. The case, in which Meta was found liable for not fully disclosing required information about political ads on Facebook, dates back nearly a decade.”

The National: UAE first Arab nation to ban under-15s from using social media. “Children under 15 will not be allowed to use social media, under a resolution issued by the UAE Cabinet. Anyone below 15 will be prohibited from creating, using or operating personal accounts on social media platforms, state news agency Wam reported on Thursday.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Psypost: Which online habits actually predict future social isolation?. “Young adults who experience intense loneliness are more likely to develop certain specialized internet habits, such as uncontrollable viewing of online pornography, while obsessive digital gaming or endless health searches online often predict future social isolation. These patterns suggest that treating social disconnection could help prevent various virtual addictions from taking root. The research was recently published in the journal Comprehensive Psychiatry.”

The Lyceum: The Eleusinian Mysteries: Interactive Game. “The Lyceum hosts the first interactive video game inspired by the Eleusinian Mysteries, which lets you walk in the shoes of a Greek citizen in one of the most important events of their lives.”

Cauenapier: Turn your site into a place people can bump into each other. “A few weeks ago, I added a silly, funny experiment on this website. I talked about it on this blog post. It was a tiny Town Square at the bottom of every page 2. When you visit the site, you’ll see a small strip populated by stick figures. Each figure represents another visitor currently browsing the website. You can see what page people are reading, walk around and send messages.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Hackaday: Smart Bulb WiFi Server Hosts “Banned” Literature. “Let’s stop for a moment and pause to consider the smart bulb. Imagine going back 20 years and telling yourself that people will be putting computers capable of acting as web servers into light bulbs just so they can control them from their telephone instead of hitting the switch. The whole thing seems crazy — but its great, because it enables hacks like this one where [RickOOOOOO] takes a commercially-available ESP32 smart bulb, and hacks it into a local file server and digital library for banned books.” 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.

Poynter: Opinion | Fact-checkers, don’t quit now: A call for endurance at GlobalFact 2026. “The International Fact-Checking Network brought together more than 300 journalists and researchers from across the globe this week in Vilnius, Lithuania, for GlobalFact 2026, the 13th annual conference. This essay is adapted from the opening welcome of the IFCN director.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Stephen Wolfram: Launching Version 15 of Wolfram Language & Mathematica: Built-in (Useful) AI & Lots of New Core Functionality. “June 23, 1988 is when we launched Version 1.0 of Mathematica. Today—almost 38 years later—we’re launching Version 15 of what—in recognition of how far it’s expanded beyond ‘math’—we now call Wolfram Language. It’s an impressive release, with a lot of new core functionality.”

Reuters: Telegram founder Durov says India has ‘punished’ more than 150 million people by banning Telegram. “Pavel Durov, founder of the ​Telegram messaging app, said ‌on Tuesday that by temporarily banning Telegram ​in the country, ​the Indian authorities have ‘punished’ over ⁠150 million ordinary ​users in India.”

AROUND THE SEARCH & SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Tubefilter: Creators love collectibles, so TikTok is launching World Cup trading cards. “As if the 2026 FIFA World Cup needed more hype, TikTok is adding some limited-edition collectibles to the mix. In partnership with 65-year-old trading card company Panini, TikTok is issuing a set of World Cup trading cards that will feature the nations, players, and legends who define the culture of international soccer.”

Boing Boing: Emojli was a social network where the only language allowed was emoji. “Emojli launched on August 29, 2014 — a social media app that restricted usernames and messages to emoji only. No letters, no numbers, no punctuation. YouTubers Tom Scott and Matt Gray built it after seeing the success of Yo, an app whose entire function was sending the word ‘Yo’ to your contacts.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

TechSpot: The White House app could soon be auto-installed on every DHS work phone. “The White House app could soon appear on every Department of Homeland Security work phone, whether employees want it or not. According to a new report, DHS personnel were told in a June 16 email that the app will ‘soon’ be automatically installed on all government mobile devices managed by the department.”

Engadget: The EU won’t pursue a mandatory game preservation law . “The European Commission has opted not to require video game companies to continue supporting their online titles after they’re no longer available for purchase. Instead, the regulator said that it will ‘explore ways to improve industry standards’ for games that may become unavailable to their audiences.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Optional.is: TIL DB. “Introducing the Today I Learnt Database. Over the last few years, each day we’ve been collecting a few ‘interesting’ headlines. We dropped them into a text file and at the end of the year went through everything, converted it to HTML and added some tags. It was an interest, but long process. We always had the intentions of doing something with these headlines!”

Random Thoughts: Searchable comics text pages?. “After finding a collection of Marvel Bullpen Bulletins for the search engine for magazines about comics, I started to wonder whether it’d be useful (or fun) to include text pages from comics in general. I mean — editorials, letters pages, ‘hype pages’… There’s information there that’s not available anywhere else. So… perhaps? Maybe?”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Spotted in my RSS feeds: a one page zine-making utility called Dirty Little Zine. From the “Who made this?” popup: “I’m Rick. I love zines. The DIY kind especially — stapled, photocopied, cheap, alive. That’s why this tool exists: a free, fast way to make one without opening InDesign.” 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.

AL.com: Birmingham animal shelter joins opposition against proposed multibillion dollar ‘AI factory’. “The Greater Birmingham Humane Society has joined a growing group of opponents against the development of a 75-acre Nebius AI factory in Birmingham’s Oxmoor Valley neighborhood. In GBHS’ Change.org petition, published June 5, the group questions the safety of building the center 1,200 feet from its future ‘animal healing campus.'”

DATA CENTERS

Source New Mexico: Firm behind New Mexico Medicaid campaign recruits influencers to promote Project Jupiter data center. “The marketing agency behind New Mexico’s award-winning Medicaid re-enrollment social media campaign is recruiting influencers to promote Project Jupiter, the controversial artificial intelligence data center under construction in Doña Ana County.”

Kansas Reflector: My rural Kansas town has a bad case of data center fever. Boom or bust, we will never be the same.. “If completed as proposed, the data center would be across the street from farms and homes where people have lived for years. It would be within sight, and perhaps sound, of an elementary school in a residential neighborhood. It might also be the first view of the city that travelers northbound on Interstate 35 would have. The soul of Emporia is worth saving, but creating a data center to physically separate the city from the Flint Hills and change the essential goodness of the town isn’t the way to do it.”

AI IN GOVERNANCE

San Jose Inside: CA Admits Using High-risk AI Systems It Neglected to Report . “A year ago, California officials had to report under a new state law how they used automated systems to make important decisions about people’s lives. They said they never did… Now, the state has issued a more expansive answer: It is currently using six automated systems to make consequential decisions about the lives of Californians.”

Reuters: Exclusive: U.S. bank regulators ramp up scrutiny of AI use at financial companies. “U.S. banking regulators are stepping up scrutiny of how lenders deploy artificial intelligence as the developing technology sweeps through the industry, pressing firms on everything from data access and governance controls ​to risks posed by third-party vendors, according to people familiar with the situation.”

AI LEGISLATION

Atlanta Journal-Constitution: ‘AI slop’ resolution seeks to reel in city’s use of artificial intelligence. “A series of bizarre images posted to the city of Atlanta’s official social media pages caught the eye of one council member who thinks the city should disclose its use of artificial intelligence. Council approved a resolution this week calling on the city to prioritize the use of ‘human-created visual media’ in its official communications.”

AI IN WORK

Futurism: Mark Zuckerberg Orders His Employees to Start Having Fun Again After Brutal Layoffs Culled Their Colleagues. “In an internal memo to employees on Friday, Zuckerberg attempted to lift their spirits in what appears to be a notable failure to read the room. Specifically, the billionaire promised to host a companywide AI hackathon in July — only to get brutally shut down by workers who were in no mood for such a thing.”

AROUND THE AI WORLD

CNBC: OpenAI mulls slashing prices as it competes with Anthropic for users: WSJ. “OpenAI is mulling sharp price cuts to its artificial intelligence offerings, as it looks to woo consumers away from rival Anthropic, the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday evening stateside, citing sources familiar with the matter.”

TechCrunch: A tech worker-backed PAC is bringing a $5M knife to Big Tech’s $100M gunfight . “A grassroots movement is forming among everyday tech workers who are demanding their companies develop and deploy AI responsibly. And the Guardrails Alliance, a new super PAC dedicated to supporting AI legislation, aims to leverage that discontent.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Engadget: Investigation by The Atlantic reveals many millions of songs used for AI music training . “We’re always glad to see more publications and groups digging deeper into artificial intelligence and its impact. Today, The Atlantic has published four searchable databases of music that has been used to train AI models. The scope is pretty staggering, with 12 million tracks in one database, 9 million in another, and the two final ones each containing about 100,000 songs.”

Associated Press: OpenAI hit with multistate probe into possible user harm as its IPO looms. “OpenAI received a subpoena from several states as part of a probe into the safety of users of its chatbot as it prepares to offer stock to the public for the first time.”

BBC: Russian families use AI to ‘resurrect’ loved ones killed in Ukraine. “For some grieving families, AI content provides a way to mourn their loved ones; in some cases, deepfakes featuring deceased people are used at funerals. Responses online to such clips are sharply divided: some say they were brought to tears, while others see the practice as unethical and deeply disturbing.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Search Engine Journal: TikTok Shows 3x More AI Slop Than YouTube, Report Finds. “About 59% of TikTok videos served to a new account’s For You feed are AI slop, according to a report from Kapwing, the video creation tool company. That’s roughly three times the rate Kapwing found on YouTube.”

Gizmodo: For the First Time, ChatGPT Reportedly Has Less Than Half of the AI Assistant Market. “OpenAI reportedly no longer dominates the AI assistant market. A report from Sensor Tower (reported on by TechCrunch) says that although OpenAI’s ChatGPT is still the number one-ranked AI assistant product, it can now brag only the plurality, not the majority of users.”

SiliconSnark: Open Letter: Mark Zuckerberg, Please Stop Managing Engineers Like AI Livestock. “Intensity without clarity is panic wearing a compression shirt. Speed without consent is churn. Accountability without agency is punishment. A leader can be fierce about the mission while still being careful with the people asked to carry it. In fact, that is the whole job. The best engineers do not need softness. They need seriousness. They need leaders who distinguish hard work from chaotic work, urgency from thrash, and ambition from organizational jump scares. They can handle a fight.” Excellent read. 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.

Spotted in my RSS feeds: Heikki’s Garden of Flowers. From the About page: “Heikki’s Garden of Flowers aims to be a comprehensive catalogue of historical and contemporary pictorial letterpress works…. The archive has more than 2500 images as of 2026. But, for a more focused set of 50, you can find my favourites in the Heikki’s favourites collection.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

The Register: Brit competition cops order Google to make search rankings less mysterious. “The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has imposed two new conduct requirements for Google’s search services, to improve transparency and fairness in result rankings and allowing users to port their search data to third parties.”

CNN: Trump administration ditches plan to close a critical ocean monitoring system after furious bipartisan backlash. “The Trump administration is U-turning on its controversial decision to dismantle a critical ocean monitoring system that provides vital information on the health of the world’s oceans, after a bipartisan backlash in Congress. The Ocean Observatories Initiative was established in 2016 and involves around 900 instruments across parts of the Pacific and Atlantic, especially designed to withstand the immense pressure and corrosive saltiness of the ocean depths.”

AROUND THE SEARCH & SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

The Guardian: Attorney general tells department to stop using X amid UK disinformation concerns. “The attorney general for England and Wales has told his office to no longer post on X, making it the first UK government department to stop using the Elon Musk-owned platform amid increasing worries about its use to incite violence and racism.”

Denver Post: After Denver-area venues nix rally with Hasan Piker, Democrats weigh whether online figures help or hurt campaigns. “The venue cancellations, at least two of them said to be based on security concerns with hosting the event featuring Hasan Piker, prompted outrage by the candidates. The episode also underlined broader questions as Democrats from different factions of the party debate whether figures like Piker draw in voters or risk alienating them.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Reuters: US court rules Ohio can restrict children’s use of social media. “Ohio can implement a ‌law requiring social media companies, including Meta Platforms’ Instagram, to obtain parental consent before allowing children under 16 to use their platforms, a U.S. appeals court ruled on Thursday.”

Politico: Meta faces calls for Congress to probe scam ads targeting seniors. “In a letter sent Thursday to House Homeland Security Committee Chair Andrew Garbarino (R-N.Y.) and ranking member Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), the groups alleged Meta has been slow to take down fraudulent ads, leaving seniors vulnerable to financial loss. The letter, shared exclusively with POLITICO, was signed by the Alliance for Retired Americans, the American Postal Workers Union Retirees and the American Federation of Teachers, among others.”

TorrentFreak: Major Publishers Sue ‘WeLib’, a Pirate Site Built on Anna’s Archive Code. “Less than a month after a New York court issued a default judgment against shadow library Anna’s Archive, thirteen major publishers have sued WeLib. The publishers characterize WeLib as a young but popular pirate site that was largely copied from Anna’s Archive. The site is allegedly used by tech companies for AI training purposes, but that allegation raises more questions than it answers.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Brennan.day: Announcing folk.zone: An attempt to build the IndieWeb commons myself.. “folk.zone is a collection of free (both as in speech and beer), community-run internet services. This includes but is not limited to: federated social media, a git forge, a writing platform, a wiki, an IRC server, a pastebin, a link shortener, a bookmarking service, an RSS reader, and more. All self-hosted. All open-source. All run by one person (me) on four machines in my living space.”

University of Queensland: World-first database first step to combatting MND. “It has been 12 years since the ice-bucket challenge went viral on social media across the world, but its impact is still front of mind for University of Queensland researchers who have developed a new database to combat Motor Neurone Disease (MND). The researchers collaborated with clinicians and researchers across Australia to establish the world’s most comprehensive unified patient data collection of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), which is the most common and aggressive form of MND that usually results in death within 3-5 years.”

Florida Atlantic University: Pixels Preserve World’s Most Endangered Marine Mammal, the Vaquita. “Researchers from Florida Atlantic University, in collaboration with the San Diego Natural History Museum, SeaWorld California, and NOAA Fisheries, have created a highly detailed digital record of a rare vaquita skeleton using advanced imaging technologies. The team combined medical CT scanning, high-resolution micro-CT imaging, and digital photography to capture the specimen at multiple scales, from overall skeletal structure to microscopic bone detail. The resulting datasets were reconstructed into precise 3D models that allow the entire skeleton to be virtually explored, measured and studied without handling the fragile original specimen.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Utah State University: Pine Needles Predict Air Quality? USU Researcher Says Yes. “Professor Randy Martin from the Utah Water Research Laboratory has used pine needles as passive air quality samplers in a recent study comparing urban air quality in Rose Park and Spanish Fork, Utah. Many compounds in the air, such as pesticides, are attracted to the fats on the surface of pine needles. Martin wanted to know if those same fats would attract toxic compounds known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs.” 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.