Coastal Review: State launches digital exhibit featuring NC’s first governor. “The exhibit, ‘Governor Richard Caswell and Revolutionary North Carolina,’ contains 337 newly transcribed and searchable documents about Caswell’s career, the mobilization of patriot troops during the early days of the American Revolution, loyalists in North Carolina, and interactions with the Cherokee Nation.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Hackaday: OldVersion Is Back, And Better Than Ever. “You know what they say — you can’t keep a good website down. OldVersion.com, the repository of outdated software that has been serving up old versions of tools you need for the last twenty-five years, is not going away as we reported last year. Not only is it sticking around, it’s gotten a retro facelift inspired by Windows 3.1 or OS/2.”

Salt Lake Tribune: We’re removing the paywall. Here’s how it will work. “Starting in May, all newly published stories on sltrib.com and in the app will be free to read — no subscription required. Additional benefits will be available to those who donate, including the e-edition version, the ability to comment and older stories in the archive.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

TechSpot: $1,000-a-month basic income program launches for workers displaced by AI. “AI Dividend issues a no-strings payment of $1,000 a month for a year to between 25 and 50 workers impacted by AI. Organizers say they have $300,000 in initial funding. The goal is to distribute $3 million in funds in 2026, an ambitious target they hope to achieve by pushing AI companies to contribute to the program, which sounds easier said than done.”

Wyoming News: Wyoming State Historic Preservation Office announces public comment period for 10-year Statewide Historic Preservation Plan. “The Wyoming State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO) is inviting the public to help shape the future of our state’s cultural heritage. Through May 28, Wyoming residents, stakeholders and preservation partners are encouraged to review and comment on the draft of the 2027-37 Statewide Historic Preservation Plan.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Rochester Beacon: Diocese abuse records still without a home after bankruptcy settlement. “A key transparency provision of the Diocese of Rochester bankruptcy—the public availability of records of the abuse inflicted on children by diocese-affiliated individuals—has yet to be resolved six months after the bankruptcy settlement was approved. When approved, attorneys involved with the bankruptcy indicated that the University of Rochester would be a likely landing spot for the records. However, the university declined.”

Daily Montanan: Data center restrictions signed into South Dakota law after push for incentives failed. “After lawmakers rejected proposals to incentivize the construction of large data centers in South Dakota, the governor signed a bill into law Tuesday that will place new limits on the industry.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

UC Davis: Students Help Digitize UC Davis Fine Arts Collection. “The exhibition, which opened in January, takes visitors behind the scenes of a museum. It invites them to see the inner workings of collection management, digitizing, research, documentation, art preparation and photography. And, there’s a lot of great art to see.”

Reuters: Majority of US federal judges are using AI, study finds. “More than half of U.S. federal judges — 60% — are using at least one AI tool in their judicial work, according to a new study, opens new tab released on Monday. Researchers from Northwestern University said they ​believe theirs is the first random-sample study of AI usage among federal judges since the ‌use of AI in legal work took off following the 2022 release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Niels Leenheer: CSS is DOOMed. “No, CSS is awesome. CSS is better than ever and it is only getting better. And that is why I built DOOM in CSS. Every wall, floor, barrel, and imp is a [div], positioned in 3D space using CSS transforms. The game logic runs in JavaScript, but the rendering is entirely CSS. You can play it right now.” 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.

Tomorrow City: Heatwave risk, down to your block: the new tool making it visible. “The WRI Ross Center for Sustainable Cities has just launched Cool Cities Lab, a mapping tool focused on understanding the extent of heatwaves and, above all, identifying vulnerabilities in urban areas…. It can assess how heat impacts areas at street level and even street by street, helping to visualize where the greatest risks occur during each heatwave.”

Bring Me The News: Can all of Minnesota’s music be archived? A new project will try. “The long-gestating Minnesota Music Archive (MMA) will officially launch on April 1. Run by the nonprofit Diverse Emerging Music Organization (DEMO), it will present a living archive of the state’s musical lore… At its launch, it’ll feature a catalogue of more than 2,000 albums from 1,200 artists, dating back as far as 1956.”

NBC New York: Mamdani launches website and interactive map about childcare for NYC families. “On Monday, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced the launch of a new online child care map and resource center, which is focused on making it easier for families to find, understand and choose child care programs that meet their needs.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Signs of the Times: Signs of the Times Digital Archive Now Through 1930. “We are pleased to announce that The Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County (PLCHC, Cincinnati) has successfully digitized seven more years (1924-30, 84 issues) of Signs of the Times magazine, adding to the original release of the magazine’s first 17 years, 1906-23.”

LiveScience: Is the metaverse finally dead and buried? What’s really going on with the embattled idea of living in virtual worlds.. “While Meta wasn’t the only company touting a new generation of VR, it’s a fairly damning indictment of the faith the technology industry has in this concept. But does that mean it’s dead and buried for good? Although it was a non-starter for many, for others, it’s not dead but simply still finding its place in the modern world.” Good read.

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

The Indypendent: Meet the Tech Workers Organizing Against Their Employers. “N is a part of No Tech for Apartheid (NOTA), an organization of tech workers that has burgeoned since Israel’s escalation of its genocide in Gaza in the past two and a half years. NOTA was created in October 2021, following the establishment of a $1.2 billion cloud contract between Israel, Google and Amazon called Project Nimbus.”

National Science Foundation: NSF initiative aims to make every American worker, business and community AI-ready. “The U.S. National Science Foundation announced a new funding opportunity as part of an effort to enable all Americans to understand, apply and create with artificial intelligence.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Axios: Exclusive: Trump’s DOJ says he’s not required to turn over official records. “President Trump’s Justice Department has concluded that a federal law requiring presidential records to be turned over to the government is unconstitutional, a senior White House official tells Axios.”

CalMatters: California regulators obscured records in hazardous waste rulemaking. “California’s hazardous waste regulator added hundreds of pages of federal road accident reports to a rulemaking record — then gave the public a broken link to access them and directed anyone who wanted to read them to submit a public records request. The documents, obtained by Earthjustice through such a request and shared with CalMatters, describe years of incidents involving hazardous materials on public roads – including crashes, spills and other accidents.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

The Guardian: Pupils in England are losing their thinking skills because of AI, survey suggests. “Pupils using artificial intelligence are losing their capacity for critical thinking, according to a survey of secondary school teachers in England. Two-thirds said they had observed the decline among children who they also said no longer felt the need to spell because of voice-to-text technology.”

PsyPost: New research suggests truth has a natural competitive edge over misinformation. “Truthful messages are more persuasive and more likely to be shared than false ones, according to new research published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. The findings, drawn from four large experiments, challenge the widespread belief that misinformation naturally spreads more effectively than accurate information.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Carnegie Mellon University: Recycling by Ear: Heinz College Students Use Sound To Sort Plastic and Cut Costs. “A team of students from Carnegie Mellon University’s Heinz College of Information Systems and Public Policy investigated whether recycling facilities could effectively sort plastics by the sounds they make when dropped, as density differs by plastic type…. By the end of the fall semester, the students had created a machine-learning model that can classify plastic types by sound with over 90% precision.” 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.

Mezha: Porohy launches open archive in Prague to preserve three decades of Ukrainian discourse. “In Prague, Porohy.cz launched a media portal with an open online archive of the Ukrainian cultural-political magazine ‘Porohy,’ which has been published in the Czech Republic since 1993.”

Herní Archiv: We digitized journals of the Prague Hi-Fi club. “Some time ago, we received on loan for digitization journals of the Prague Hi-Fi club from 1972-1997. Although not directly related to games, it is still interesting and rare material. Thanks to its focus on consumer electronics, it occasionally contains interesting observations about computing technology, and the club also played a small role in the prehistory of video games in Czechoslovakia.”

European Heritage Hub: UNESCO launches a global course to safeguard cultural property from illicit trafficking. “To strengthen international efforts in this field, UNESCO, through the Antenna in Sarajevo of its Office in Venice and together with the Culture and Emergency Entity and its Illicit Trafficking and Return and Restitution Unit, is launching a massive open online course (MOOC) on preventing illicit trafficking of cultural property.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Search Engine Journal: Google Begins Rolling Out March 2026 Core Update. “Google has begun rolling out the March core update, according to the Google Search Status Dashboard.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Ars Technica: Senators want US energy information agency to monitor data center electricity usage. “Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren and Republican Senator Josh Hawley are urging the US’s central energy information agency to provide better information on how much electricity data centers actually use.”

Tubefilter: Japanese police just made a VTuber their official Traffic Regulation Ambassador. “Here’s a philosophical question: Would you be more likely to obey the rules of the road if a cute anime girl was telling you about them? Police in Kagawa Prefecture are betting the answer is yes. They’ve tapped Hololive VTuber AZKi as their official Traffic Regulation Ambassador ahead of a Sept. 1, 2026 change that will cut residential speed limits from 60 km/h to 30 km/h across the entire seaside prefecture.”

Wall Street Journal: The decadelong feud shaping the future of AI. This is an MSN-syndicated version of the article and has no paywall. “In communication with colleagues in recent months, the Anthropic CEO has compared the legal battle between Altman and Elon Musk to the fight between Hitler and Stalin, dubbed a $25 million donation by OpenAI President Greg Brockman to a pro-Trump super political-action committee ‘evil,’ and likened OpenAI and other rivals to tobacco companies knowingly hawking a harmful product.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

International Consortium of Investigative Journalists: Canada revokes dozens of crypto firms’ registrations. “Anti-money laundering authorities in Canada have revoked registrations of nearly three dozen cryptocurrency businesses following an investigation by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and The Toronto Star.”

The Register: Security boffins scoured the web and found hundreds of valid API keys. “Computer security boffins have conducted an analysis of 10 million websites and found almost 2,000 API credentials strewn across 10,000 webpages.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Louisville Public Media: Research points to how companies could make social media less addictive for teens. “Early research on social media’s impacts on teen mental health focused mostly on how much time they spent on these platforms, with some studies finding more time being linked with worse mental health symptoms, particularly depression. But in recent years, researchers have homed in specifically on behaviors that indicate compulsive use of social media.” 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.

Heatmap News: What Americans Really Pay For Electricity . “Heatmap and MIT are launching the Electricity Price Hub, a new public data platform built to address this information gap. The hub provides month-to-month estimates of residential electricity prices and bills for utilities across the United States, from 2020 to the present.”

Mashable: Jmail creators release Jeffrey Epstein’s calendar as JCal. “The creators of Jmail, the viral Gmail clone that mimics Jeffrey Epstein’s email inbox, are back at it again. This time, the makers of Jmail have created JCal, a Google Calendar clone that shows you what Jeffrey Epstein’s Google Calendar likely looked like. The calendar events are based on Epstein’s schedule, as detailed through document releases in the Epstein Files. JCal contains 20 years of Epstein’s calendar schedule.”

Evert Pot: Burrow, a new Gopher client in the browser. “After building a gopher server and website, I couldn’t quite get enough of the Gopher bug, and decided to build a Gopher client in the browser. To be honest, this is actually more like a HTTP proxy for Gopher, but I might at some point turn this into a standalone client or even port it to some native platforms.” Those of y’all old enough to remember Gopher may experience nostalgia and relief at the sight of these plain-text web sites.

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Search Engine Land: YouTube test replaces video titles with AI summaries. Gross! “Google is testing AI-generated summaries in YouTube feeds, replacing video titles with auto-written synopses. Some YouTube users are seeing video titles replaced by AI-generated summaries in the Android app. Reports on Reddit showed title-less video cards with collapsible summary boxes instead.”

Video Game History Foundation: Our first “expansion pack”! New materials in our development collections. “This week, we’ve updated two of our existing library collections: the Mark Flitman papers and the Andrew Nelson papers! We recently received packages from Mark and Andrew containing new materials from their collections that we missed the first time around, as well as a few items we needed to rescan at higher quality.”

USEFUL STUFF

MakeUseOf: Extensions, plugins, and add-ons aren’t the same thing — and I’ve been mixing them up for years. “Somewhere between installing a grammar checker and grabbing a reverb effect for my DAW, it dawned on me that I’d been tossing around the words extension, plugin, and add-on like they were interchangeable. Like three different names for the same thing. Close enough, right? Not really. The differences are subtle, which is probably why most people never bother digging into them. And to be fair, the tech world hasn’t helped much, as plenty of big-name apps blur those lines, anyway. That alone makes it worth unpacking.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

TechSpot: Steve Wozniak says he’s “disappointed a lot” by AI and rarely uses it. “While it’s fair to say that most people are skeptical at best when it comes to AI and its abilities, the opposite is often true for those in tech. But Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak is one of the exceptions. In a recent interview, Woz said he doesn’t use AI very much, and when he does, he’s ‘disappointed a lot.'”

Man of Many: “Looksmaxxing” King Clavicular Storms Off Interview Thanks to One Simple Answer. “It was meant to be a conversation about self-improvement. It ended the second someone said they didn’t need it. Clavicular, the online figure helping push out the latest wave of ‘looksmaxxing’ content, recently sat down with Channel 5’s Andrew Callaghan – a perfectly nice looking man, for the record – for an interview on his Kick stream. It didn’t last long.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Associated Press: Hacked hospitals, hidden spyware: Iran conflict shows how digital fight is ingrained in warfare. “As they fled an Iranian missile strike, some Israelis with Android phones received a text offering a link to real-time information about bomb shelters. But instead of a helpful app, the link downloaded spyware giving hackers access to the device’s camera, location and all its data.”

New Hampshire Bulletin: Political consultant begins live streaming NH Executive Council meetings on YouTube. “The New Hampshire State House isn’t always known for being technologically savvy, but the Executive Council moved a step further into the digital age Wednesday with a meeting live stream…. On Wednesday, Chris Maidment, a political consultant for Councilors John Stephen and David Wheeler, live streamed the meeting for the first time.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Harvard Data Science Review: Useful, Not Just Usable: Design Considerations for Instructionally Meaningful K–12 Datasets. “The rapid expansion of open data has created new possibilities for engaging K–12 students with authentic real-world datasets. Yet for many educators, abundant data does not translate into usable classroom resources. In this article, we describe what we call a K–12 ‘data supply chain crisis’: while high-quality secondary datasets from government and public agencies are available, they are rarely prepared in ways that support everyday instructional use.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Daily Free Press (Boston University): ‘Call A Boomer’ phonebooth fosters cross-country, multi-generational connections. “Outside Pavement Coffeehouse, a plaque on a phonebox installed during the first week of March invites people to ‘call a boomer’ as part of a social experiment. When someone makes a call, a similar phone labeled ‘Call a Zoomer’ located in a senior housing complex in Reno, Nevada rings, initiating a conversation spanning nearly 3,000 miles and multiple generations.” Good morning, Internet…

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

NEW RESOURCES

Keys News: Catalog brings local history out of vault. “The Florida Keys History Center, Monroe County’s archive of documents and photographs illustrating the history of the Florida Keys, has a new online catalog providing public access to unique documents in the collection, just in time to start celebrating America’s 250th anniversary.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Associated Press: Mamdani puts New York City government back on TikTok. “Almost three years ago, New York City joined governments across the country in banning TikTok from its phones over security concerns about the Chinese social media site. On Tuesday, Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a bona fide social media star, took to the app to announce a reversal: ‘TikTok, we’re back.'”

Engadget: Google’s Lyria 3 Pro can now generate AI music (slop) up to 3 minutes in length. “Google just introduced Lyria 3 Pro, an updated version of its AI model that generates songs based on prompts. The biggest improvement here is the ability to make full three-minute songs, up from 30 seconds when the product launched last month.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

The Guardian: US directs embassies to team up against foreign ‘hostility’ – and use X to ‘counter anti-American propaganda’. “The United States has directed every American embassy and consulate across the world to launch coordinated campaigns against foreign propaganda and endorses Elon Musk’s X as an ‘innovative’ tool to help do it.”

Maine Monitor: Maine lawmakers targeted by social media campaign opposing data center ban. “One of Maine’s top law firms is pressing legislators to oppose a full ban on the construction of new data centers in a bid to save its clients’ ventures in the state. Preti Flaherty, an Augusta-based law firm that’s representing companies trying to build data centers in Sanford and Jay, launched social media advertisements targeting legislators late last week, according to Meta’s ad database.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

CalMatters: Digital tablets mellowed California prisons. Now a tech migration is riling users . “…today, the entire system with almost 90,000 prisoners is in the midst of a disruptive switch to new tablets from a new vendor. The project is months behind schedule, which temporarily resulted in increased text messaging charges for consumers at the first prison facility where it became fully implemented.”

Hoover Institution: Court Rules Li Rui Collection to Remain at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. “The Hoover Institution and Stanford University undertook more than five years of legal proceedings and invested significant resources to defend in a U.S. court of law Li’s right to have his collection made available for study by scholars, historians and the public. Witnesses for both sides testified that, if returned to China, the collection and all of its history would at minimum be censored and would most likely be banned.”

Gothamist: New digital hall passes track bathroom breaks, gather data in NYC schools. “Permission to use the bathroom has taken an Orwellian turn at more than 150 New York City public schools, students say. New digital hall passes allow teachers to more closely monitor how long a student is spending in the bathroom — and who else has requested a bathroom break.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

The Conversation: It’s not just gen Z – older adults need help spotting online misinformation too. “In 2024, nine in ten people in the UK reported seeing misinformation on social media. Yet only 3% of the population had taken a media literacy course. While there is working being done to ensure technology is accessible, users must have the skills and confidence to recognise if they are being deceived. My new paper reviewed studies which delivered misinformation training to older adults aged 50 and over. My colleagues and I identified which approaches improved misinformation detection, but also noted that some had the opposite effect.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

TechSpot: Meet the 91-year-old gamer who beat Resident Evil Requiem the old-fashioned way. “Few players can claim to have mastered Resident Evil Requiem without once glancing at a walkthrough. Fewer still can say they did it at 91, armed only with a pen, paper, and patience. Yet that is exactly how Chinese gamer Yang Binglin – better known online as Game Grandpa – tackled Capcom’s latest survival-horror installment.” 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

DigitalNC: Cartoons in Clayton: Political Cartoons Found in Newly Available Editions of The Clayton News. “A total of 1629 new issues from 1915 to 1969 can now be viewed on DigitalNC. Like many other community newspapers, The Clayton News reported on the happenings around Clayton, N.C., but one aspect of these issues stands out in particular: the political cartoons.”

PR Newswire: New Tool Helps Americans Find Trusted Local News Ahead Of April 9 Local News Day (PRESS RELEASE). “Organizers of Local News Day announced the launch of the Local News Finder, a free tool that helps Americans discover trusted local news sources covering their communities.” Also don’t forget Local Search America’s Local News Feed — local news from over 1050 sources around the US. Still have more sources to add!

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

The Cork: IRISH HERITAGE: Skibbereen Heritage Centre adds more historic burial records to website database. “Skibbereen Heritage Centre has added newly digitised Cork County Council burial register records from 27 graveyards to its online database. This latest update brings the total number of burial records available on the website to 109,385 from 1,700 graveyards across Cork County.”

Associated Press: Judge blocks Trump order to end funding for National Public Radio and Public Broadcasting Service. “A federal judge on Tuesday agreed to permanently block the Trump administration from implementing a presidential directive to end federal funding for National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service.”

Reuters: Elon Musk must face class action over late disclosure of Twitter stake, judge rules. “A federal judge on Tuesday said former Twitter investors who accused Elon Musk of defrauding them by waiting ‌too long to disclose his initial investment in the social media company may ‌pursue their case as a class action.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

New York Times: Government Trolls Sling Memes in the Online Trenches of Mideast War This link goes to a gift article. “Brig. Gen. Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, a former Guards commander and the speaker of Iran’s Parliament, has been a key figure overseeing the war. He is also active on social media, fighting in the messaging battles.”

PressGazette: The SEO parasites buying, exploiting and ultimately killing online newsbrands. “Parasitical SEO companies are buying respected online news outlets in order to harvest their reputations before leaving behind a ruined shell. One organisation linked to this sort of activity is Clickout Media, which bought a network of UK-based video game sites replacing human writers with AI ‘journalists’ and packing them with links to offshore gambling websites.”

Saigon News: “Little Sun” digital library launched to give kids online access to literature. “The ‘Little Sun’ initiative aims to create an online reading space where literary works are conveyed through the voices of artists and celebrities. In this project, each artist is regarded as a ‘sunshine sower,’ while the children are the ‘rays of sunshine,’ together forming an ecosystem that spreads knowledge and inspires reading.

SECURITY & LEGAL

Michigan Advance: Michigan’s use of AI to process SNAP applications draws concerns about past automation failures. “The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services has begun using artificial intelligence to help boost the number of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program cases it can review, a department official told members of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on DHHS last week.”

The Register: Welsh government used Copilot for review to justify closing organization. “The Welsh government used Microsoft’s Copilot to help write a review of an industry liaison body that it then scrapped, its chairman has told a Senedd committee. The government set up Industry Wales as a state-owned company to run sector forums for aerospace, automotive, and technology in 2013, adding a fourth for net zero-focused businesses in 2022.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Museum Management and Curatorship: Experiencing a historic garden online: impact of an inclusive digital multisensory audio descriptive tour. “An inclusive audio descriptive online tour of the Chelsea Physic Garden was created for people who were blind and partially blind (BPB) and sighted. Sixty-two participants completed an evaluation questionnaire directly after experiencing the online tour, and then again 2 weeks later. Quantitative and qualitative analysis showed similarly positive responses for enjoyment and emotion.”

Ars Technica: Google bumps up Q Day deadline to 2029, far sooner than previously thought. “Google is dramatically shortening its readiness deadline for the arrival of Q Day, the point at which existing quantum computers can break public-key cryptography algorithms that secure decades’ worth of secrets belonging to militaries, banks, governments, and nearly every individual on earth.” 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.

Liverpool John Moores University: History students design new Liverpool Irish Centre Digital Archive. “Undergraduate History students at LJMU have helped to launch a new digital archive for the Liverpool Irish Centre. The project, developed in collaboration between the LJMU History Department and the centre, brings together photographs, videos, and other memorabilia from across six decades.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

The Register: Anthropic tweaks timed usage limits to discourage Claude demand during peak hours. “Anthropic on Wednesday adjusted its opaque usage limits for Claude customers by reducing the power of the services it delivers during times of peak demand, in an effort to balance demand with its capacity to deliver service.”

AFP: OpenAI shelves plans for erotic chatbot. “OpenAI has put plans for a sexually explicit chatbot on hold indefinitely, the company said Thursday, amid mounting concerns about the societal and reputational risks of releasing such a product.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

New York State Library: Scanning with FamilySearch. “The NYS Library is working with Family Search International, a global nonprofit genealogy organization, to expand access to some of the New York’s most important ancestry records and historical collections. Since January 2026, Mark and Lynne Hamp, a retired couple from Utah, have been hard at work scanning books from the NYS Library’s collection for digital access through FamilySearch.”

The Sun (Nigeria): Stakeholders warn over 50,000 Nigerian films could face extinction as NFC, DAAD, NFVCB, CBAAC push for urgent archival reforms. “Stakeholders across Nigeria’s film, academic, and cultural sectors have raised alarm over the rapidly deteriorating state of the nation’s audiovisual heritage, warning that over 50,000 films face possible loss unless urgent reforms, increased funding, and accelerated digitization efforts are implemented.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Gizmodo: Attorney Hit With Historic Fine for Citing AI-Generated Cases. “A court in Oregon has issued a fine of $10,000 to an attorney who submitted a legal brief with citations and quotes hallucinated by AI, according to a new report from the Oregonian. It’s the highest fine yet for citing fake cases in the state and would have been higher, but the judges offered some leniency, according to the newspaper.”

Idaho Education News: ‘The genie’s out of the bottle:’ Little signs artificial intelligence education bill. “Idaho Gov. Brad Little signed a bill instructing the Idaho Department of Education to develop a statewide framework for integrating generative artificial intelligence (AI) into classrooms.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

PsyPost: Excessive smartphone habits tied to emotional dysregulation in the brain . “Young adults who struggle to manage their smartphone habits display altered brain connectivity patterns related to emotional processing and self-control. A newly released study maps how these neural differences correspond to difficulties in regulating negative feelings. The research was published in the journal BMC Psychology.”

The Assembly: Public Records Must Be Produced ‘Promptly.’ How Did N.C. Towns Do?. “In conjunction with Sunshine Week, an annual celebration of open government and public records, NC Local, The Assembly, WFAE, and WUNC requested the same set of emails from North Carolina’s 20 largest cities at the same time. Some provided the documents within minutes. Others placed the requests into queues that could take months or even years to clear.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Los Angeles Wave: Mayor plans to install 60,000 solar-powered street lights. “Mayor Karen Bass signed a new executive order March 25 codifying a partnership between the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power and the Bureau of Street Lighting to install 60,000 solar-powered street lights over the next two 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: Afro Index. From the About page: “Afro Index is an attempt to build a structured, culturally informed reference system: one that reflects the real range, technique, and identity behind Black hair. It’s both a design project and an evolving archive, focused on improving representation through better tools. No longer will creatives have to suffer through the ‘Killmonger locs’ era.”

EVENTS

Poetry Foundation: The Poetry Foundation Marks National Poetry Month with Free Programs, New Video Series, and Special Offers. “The Poetry Foundation, whose mission is to amplify poetry and celebrate poets year-round, provides new ways to access and engage with the art form in the month of April, which is National Poetry Month.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Engadget: Snapchat users sent ‘nearly’ 2 trillion snaps in 2025. “In 2025, Snapchat users created close to 2 trillion snaps, the company said in an update. That works out to about 5.5 billion distinct snaps per day and about 63,000 each second, according to the company. When you consider that Snapchat has about 474 million daily users, that averages to more than 11 snaps per user each day.”

Search Engine Roundtable: Google AI Mode Tests Changing Some Links To Overlay Cards – Reducing Clicks. “Google is testing changing out some of the links within AI Mode to show as overlay cards, instead of take you directly to the website it is mentioning. This obviously will result in fewer direct clicks to those websites.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Axios: Scoop: New pro-AI group preps $100M midterm blitz to boost Trump’s agenda . “A new pro-AI political operation is jumping into this year’s midterms with a plan to spend more than $100 million, the latest push by a big-money group to promote a deregulation agenda.”

University of Waterloo: CFI support expands access to Canadiana, nation’s digital historical archive. “Known as Open Science Infrastructure for Canad(ian)a: Digital Collections of the Future, the project is led by Professor Constance Crompton, Canada Research Chair in Digital Humanities at the University of Ottawa. Recently awarded $4.02 million from the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI), the initiative will develop a comprehensive, ethical and accessible digital archive of Canada’s historical and cultural materials.”

Screen Daily: British Screen Forum awarded £200,000 to address data gaps in UK film industry . “The second pilot will develop a new database which captures the commercial performance of films. It will explore how to gather and analyse the lifetime commercial performance of films while respecting the commercial sensitivity of the features. This will include grouping films together into categories, such as budget size or genre, and allowing users access to lifetime performance data within these categories, to help with understanding market appetite and building budgets.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Mashable: Trump’s new White House app is a security and privacy nightmare. “X user @Thereallo1026 went so far as decompiling the White House app and found that it’s sharing the exact location data of its users every 4.5 minutes and sending that information to a third-party server.”

Reuters: Swiss back tougher social media rules for minors, survey finds. “The vast majority of Swiss want stronger protection for children and teenagers ‌on social media, according to a survey published ‌on Sunday, as governments and courts worldwide intensify scrutiny of Big ​Tech over its impact on young users.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Information Fusion: Privacy-aware detection of fake identity documents: methodology, benchmark, and improved algorithms (FakeIDet2) . “Researchers are now trying to develop methods to detect an ever-growing number of these AI-based fakes that are almost indistinguishable from authentic (bona fide) IDs. In this counterattack effort, researchers are faced with an important challenge: the difficulty in using real data to train fake ID detectors.”

MIT News: How to create “humble” AI. “An MIT-led team is designing artificial intelligence systems for medical diagnosis that are more collaborative and forthcoming about uncertainty.”

PsyPost: Most Americans don’t fear an AI apocalypse, according to new research. “An online study examining attitudes towards AI indicated that most people tend to hold optimistic views toward AI and tend to disagree with extreme negative attitudes. Moreover, people with higher social health, higher agreeableness, lower neuroticism and loneliness, as well as those more familiar with technology, tended to have more favorable views about the large-scale impact of AI.” sorry, still not feeling favorable. 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.

Journal of Open Archaeology Data: The Southern African Stone Age Site Index (SASSI): A Spatial, Chronological and Contextual Resource for Archaeological Research . “…the Southern African Stone Age Site Index (SASSI) provides a centralised, openly accessible resource for archaeological research, featuring 492 reported Earlier, Middle and Later Stone Age sites from South Africa, Lesotho, Eswatini and Namibia. It includes both dated and undated sites, and encompasses diverse contexts.”

Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle: Family Launches NaomiCooks.com. “A new website, NaomiCooks.com, has launched to preserve and celebrate the work of Milwaukee-based syndicated food writer and cookbook author Naomi Arbit, 98, whose recipes and columns reached more than 200 community newspapers nationwide.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Ars Technica: Claude Code can now take over your computer to complete tasks. “The company has announced that Claude Code (and its more casual user-oriented Claude Cowork) can now ‘point, click, and navigate what’s on your screen’ to ‘open files, use the browser, and run dev tools automatically’ when necessary to complete tasks.”

USEFUL STUFF

How-To Geek: I replaced Google Keep with this free open-source app (and never looked back). “Keep is one of Google’s better products. It has a great UI, and you can capture notes with just one tap. Despite using it for years, however, I have wanted an alternative. So why bother replacing it? I can give you two reasons and a free, open-source app that does what Keep can’t.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Washington Post: Post reporters called the White House. Their phones showed ‘Epstein Island.’ This is an MSN-syndicated version of the article and has no paywall. “Those who saw ‘Epstein Island’ were using Android phones from Google’s Pixel brand. Calling the White House from iPhones did not show a name on the screen. After The Post notified Google about the on-screen naming, company spokesman Matthew Flegal said Google identified what he referred to as a “fake edit” in Google Maps that was ‘briefly’ picked up in the call identification feature of some Android phones.”

Times of India: Google IPL 2026 doodle celebrates start of IPL with live scores, upcoming matches and more. “The Indian Premier League 2026 has kicked off today (March 28). Google has marked the 19th season of IPL with a vibrant and interactive doodle on its homepage…. Clicking on the doodle redirects users to a dedicated IPL portal, where they can access live scores, match schedules, and real-time insights.”

Abduzeedo: San Rita’s Topographic Web Design Navigates Projects as Terrain. “Montreal studio San Rita built their topographic web design around navigable 3D terrain, using real GPS elevation data and vintage map textures for craft.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Fstoppers: What Happens to Your Photos When You Die and What to Do About It Now. “Most photographers spend years building an archive worth protecting, but very few have a plan for what happens to it after they die. Copyright, physical media, cloud accounts, and stock licensing don’t sort themselves out automatically, and without a plan, decades of work can vanish or get tied up in legal chaos. Coming to you from David Bergman with Adorama, this detailed video has Bergman walking through both the legal and practical sides of protecting your photographic archive after death.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Colorado Sun: Google taps Boulder physicist to head up new quantum-computing team in Colorado. “Google said Tuesday that it is entering the Colorado quantum realm in what seems like a very tiny way: It hired a quantum physicist in Boulder to speed up development of its first quantum computer. But by adding University of Colorado and federal lab researcher Adam Kaufman, Google is taking a much bigger step in the industry.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Common Dreams: ‘No Kings!’ 8 Million Rally Against Trump in Largest Single-Day Protest in US History. “Organizers called it ‘the largest single-day nationwide demonstrations in US history,’ with an estimate 8 million people coming out for events in communities and cities nationwide.” 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.

Georgia O’Keeffe Museum: Georgia O’Keeffe Museum Launches Access O’Keeffe, a Groundbreaking Digital Catalogue Raisonné. “Access O’Keeffe provides an accessible, dynamic platform to explore the inspiring life and art of Georgia O’Keeffe as a user-friendly, searchable website with high-resolution images, visual descriptions, exhibition histories, archival materials, and research data associated with the artist’s two-volume catalogue raisonné, originally written by preeminent O’Keeffe scholar Barbara Buhler Lynes in 1999.”

Bard College: Bard College and PEN America Announce the Launch of the Central America Independent Media Archive. “Bard College, together with PEN America, is pleased to announce the launch of Central America Independent Media Archive (CAIMA), an initiative to safeguard and preserve independent journalism in Central America through a digital archive accessible to the public.”

Economic Sociology & Political Economy: The Karl Polanyi Bibliographic Database of Scholarship and Digital Archive. “The Karl Polanyi Institute of Political Economy at Concordia University has launched the Bibliographic Database of International Scholarship – a project dedicated to exploring Karl Polanyi’s preeminent intellectual legacy and current influence worldwide.”

EVENTS

Internet Archive Blog: Join Internet Archive and Partners for the National Summit on Local News Preservation. “Join Internet Archive, Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE), and the Poynter Institute for the National Summit on Local News Preservation. This event will bring together the producers, preservers, and users of local news to develop collaborative, scalable solutions to address the urgent preservation challenges presented by the rapidly changing local news landscape.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

TechCrunch: Bluesky leans into AI with Attie, an app for building custom feeds. “With Attie, anyone will be able to build their own custom feed just by typing in commands in natural language, the same as if they’re chatting with any other AI chatbot.”

USEFUL STUFF

Fast Company: This free web tool makes everything way easier to read. “The next time you find yourself facing a web page with way too much going on, remember a tool called Textise​…. Textise is a simple-as-can-be website that converts any page you’re looking at into plain text—no fuss, no formatting, no images of any sort included.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Deccan Herald: India should develop own internet search engine for digital sovereignty: Congress MP Neeraj Dangi. “Rajya Sabha Congress MP Neeraj Dangi on Wednesday made a strong case for India to develop an indigenous internet search engine to reduce dependence on foreign companies, like Google, and strengthen digital sovereignty.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

CNBC: Epstein victims sue Google and the Trump administration over alleged disclosure of personal information. “The suit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, where Google is headquartered, claims the Justice Department ‘outed’ about 100 Epstein survivors in late 2025 and early 2026, and that even after the government acknowledged the mistake and withdrew the information, ‘online entities like Google continuously republish it, refusing victim’s pleas to take it down.'”

Mashable: OpenAI’s new open-source prompts take aim at sexual content for teens. “The prompt-based safety pack includes model guidance on common teenage risks, developmental content recommendations, and age-appropriate guidelines on topics such as self-harm, sexual content and romantic role play, dangerous trends or viral challenges, and harmful body ideals.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Stanford: AI overly affirms users asking for personal advice. “In a new study published in Science, Stanford computer scientists showed that artificial intelligence large language models are overly agreeable, or sycophantic, when users solicit advice on interpersonal dilemmas. Even when users described harmful or illegal behavior, the models often affirmed their choices.”

Vancouver City News: TMU research group working to preserve accounts of residential school survivors . “Thousands of residential school survivors, who spent years sharing their experiences as a way to find healing, closure, and accountability, are facing the prospect of losing the largest archive of their testimonies, which is set to be destroyed next year. However, the Survivors Secretariat, a research group from Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU), is working to ensure their accounts are preserved.”

Search Engine Land: AI citations favor listicles, articles, product pages: Study. “AI search citations favor a small set of formats. Listicles, articles, and product pages drive over half of all mentions across major LLMs, according to new Wix Studio AI Search Lab research analyzing 75,000 AI answers and more than 1 million citations across ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, and Perplexity.” 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.