Tom’s Hardware: Anthropic confirms new Claude Code limits to prevent game cloning — users report Opus 5.5 is also actively blocking reverse engineering tasks. “Anthropic’s recent move to have Claude Code deny video game cloning and possibly reverse engineering efforts has come under heavy fire from the software development community. Hot on the heels of Friday’s report on the matter, an Anthropic employee responded to the tweet with the purported rule update with a direct statement confirming that the firm added guardrails to Claude Code to prevent game recreation.”

ANTI-AI SENTIMENT

The Verge: r/opensource just banned AI, non-English speakers, and more. “The mods at r/opensource posted new submission rules that, among other things, banned projects that use AI. The post made Saturday evening opens by saying, ‘If your project uses AI, is made by AI, or is intended for AI, it’s not welcome on r/opensource. AI, as it exists today, is incongruent to this Open Source community.'”

DATA CENTERS

The Verge: AI has come for Arizona’s water. “In Arizona and elsewhere, data center developers have tried to win over locals by making enticing promises about the jobs, tax revenue, and infrastructure they’ll bring with them. All they ask for in exchange is water — and, they swear, not nearly as much of it as you’d expect. Some hyperscale data centers, like Google’s facility in The Dalles, Oregon, use about 1.5 million gallons a day, about one-third of what TSMC’s Arizona complex consumes in the same timeframe. Those reassurances, however, aren’t enough to assuage Arizonans, who now have to contend with the fact that the state will soon lose access to nearly 30 percent of the water it receives from the Colorado River.”

AI IN GOVERNANCE

CNBC: Musk and Zuckerberg echo Trump’s push to rebrand AI as ‘super intelligence’ on earnings calls. Others do not. “A month after President Donald Trump ordered that ‘super intelligence’ replace the term artificial intelligence within executive branch departments and agencies, his leading tech allies, Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, followed suit on earnings calls. Their fellow tech CEOs were less eager to do the same.”

CommonWealth Beacon: State says resident data is safe with state AI tool. Advocates have concerns.. “The AI assistant can handle resident data like tax records, RMV files, housing and rental information, and benefits documentation. There is ‘no direct opt-in or opt-out for residents,’ according to the tool’s public FAQ, which describes it as strictly internal and not the final word on state decisions. Given the recent hacking incidents, CommonWealth Beacon checked back in with state officials to see how they’re protecting the data. Here’s what you need to know.”

AI IN EDUCATION

New York Times: Students at an A.I. School Were Supposed to Learn Faster. Many Aren’t.. “Alpha students are participating, essentially, in an experiment. At Alpha, there are no traditional teachers, few books and little paper. All of the academic lessons are delivered via apps, and students can earn lavish prizes for completing their work. Adults are present, but only as motivational guides: Students stuck on a concept can do video calls with tutors abroad. Some children who struggle leave or have been pushed out, according to documents and several former private school parents and employees.”

The Atlantic: The Currency of the Journal Article Is Collapsing. “Unfortunately, the scholars submitting papers aren’t the only ones using AI. So are many of their peer reviewers. One recent peer review that my journal received—from a senior scholar—read like an unedited cut-and-paste job from an LLM. The giveaway was that it criticized the authors for failing to cite a particular text—in this case, the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders—when the paper did indeed cite it.”

AI FINANCE

Futurism: Investors Are Getting Palpably Nervous About the AI Industry’s Financial Situation. “Since most of these companies’ fates are inextricably linked by circular financing, a major economic downturn or weakening demand could have cascading repercussions, especially considering much of the sector’s financing is based on debt. Beyond the tech industry’s very bad week, data center operators aren’t looking much better. Nvidia customer CoreWave, which analysts have dubbed the ‘AI trade’s canary in the coal mine,’ has also seen its shares decline over months, raising plenty of flags.”

AROUND THE AI WORLD

Tom’s Hardware: OpenAI CEO says it’s ‘quite terrible’ for your PC to have RAM — Sam Altman says data centers offer better utilization. “When discussing local inference on home computers with open-source models, Altman discussed the assumption that people will be able to run local AI on their own computers, the ones they may already own or want to build. Then he explained why that’s a bad idea.” Local water baron thinks your well is a terrible idea.

TechCrunch: Google expands AI Search ads globally as core ad growth slows. “Google is bringing ads in its AI-powered Search experiences to international markets, betting that generative AI can open up new revenue opportunities even as growth in its core search advertising business slows.”

South China Morning Post: China’s ‘Lipstick King’ hawks tokens as AI gets mass-market Singles’ Day push. “China’s ‘Lipstick King’ has traded make-up swatches for artificial intelligence. Top live-streamer Li Jiaqi on Monday evening teamed up with an executive from Alibaba Group Holding to pitch AI subscriptions, selling nearly 100,000 monthly packages in just 30 minutes, according to data provided by the e-commerce giant.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Reuters: OpenAI to limit weapons information for teens on ChatGPT in violence-prevention push. “OpenAI said on Friday it is tightening limits on the weapons-related information ChatGPT provides to teens, even ‌when a question appears harmless, as part of new safeguards ‌aimed at preventing real-world violence.”

The Guardian: Anthropic’s Claude AI model accessed Georgia voter data in US. “Anthropic’s Claude model accessed voter data in the US state of Georgia, the AI company has confirmed, in the latest example of unauthorised behaviour by the technology. The AI model managed to bypass a paywall to reach data that is publicly available but is typically accessible only after paying a fee.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Texas A&M: AI models can get brain rot, too. “‘Brain rot’ has emerged as a term to describe cognitive changes — like diminished attention spans — in humans who engage with an abundance of frivolous, attention-grabbing content. Tu, assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Texas A&M University, found that when large language models (LLMs) train on junk data, they can get brain rot, too.”

ABC News (Australia): University students attempt to manipulate fictional election in ‘Kingstonia’ using AI bots. “Kaira is part of a competition led by researchers at the University of New South Wales, which pits teams against one another to manipulate social media to win a simulated vote. They’re allowed to build AI bots to post, like, share and reply on a made-up social media platform. Points are awarded for grabbing attention, changing voters’ views and spotting rival teams’ bots.” 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.

Tom’s Hardware: ‘America hates data centers’ — New data highlights public sentiment. “Following the recent news that Amazon canceled plans to build four new facilities after a public outcry, a new website seeks to detail how sour public sentiment on the subject has turned. American Sentiment is operated by Prophecy Gov, an AI startup based in San Francisco, and it has turned 10,202 public comments at 417 local government meetings from 2026 into a scrollable collection of facts and figures that will give data center builders nightmares, revealing that more than 90% of public comments on data centers are negative.”

EINPresswire: “Giant of Improvisation”: The Harry Pepl Archive Goes Online (PRESS RELEASE). “Five rediscovered concert recordings, 413 press documents and a body of work spanning European jazz and early digital studio practice: harrypepl.com makes the estate of Austrian guitarist, composer and innovator Harry Pepl accessible for the first time through a growing online archive.”

EVENTS

Penn State: Three online World Digital Preservation Day events highlight best practices. “Digital stewardship of data impacts everyone in the age of email, smartphones and social media. Penn State University Libraries is hosting three virtual programs for World Digital Preservation Day 2026 on Thursday, Nov. 5, highlighting digital initiatives at a local historical society, supporting a manuscript database for the J.R.R. Tolkien materials and software emulation.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Kansas Reflector: Fort Hays State’s Sternberg Museum will remain open after outpouring of support. “The Sternberg Museum of Natural History will remain open after fear of its closure pushed donors to gift $1.2 million toward its operating expenses, the president of Fort Hays State University told a legislative committee Monday. Despite the museum’s reprieve, legislators challenged the way Tisa Mason, who has led the university since 2017, managed the recent announcement the museum would close and also her reasoning for deciding to cut the facility from FHSU’s budget.”

Engadget: Snap settles social media addiction lawsuit to avoid trial. “Snap CEO Evan Spiegel won’t have to testify in a high-profile trial over social media addiction after all. Snap has settled a lawsuit brought by two teens who alleged their use of the app led to self harm and other mental health issues.”

AROUND THE SEARCH & SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

PBS Newshour: Palm Beach plane crash footage isn’t AI-generated, despite social media claims. “Footage from Palm Beach County, Florida, shows a plane nosediving into the ground at full speed, cratering the pavement, and dissolving into fire and smoke. It looks unreal. So unreal that some social media users say it’s fake.”

University of South Carolina: University Libraries awarded 2026 NEH grant for digitization of SC newspapers. “University of South Carolina Libraries has received a 2026 National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) grant of $324,979 to continue its work digitizing South Carolina newspapers. The grant is one of 81 awarded nationwide by the NEH this year, and the only one to be awarded in South Carolina. It is the 6th NEH grant that has been awarded to University Libraries for digitization of South Carolina newspapers.”

The Line of Best Fit: Gee Vaucher Foundation launches campaign to archive work of seminal protest-artist. “The Gee Vaucher Foundation has launched a £100,000 fundraising campaign to archive more than 2,000 works by the artist Gee Vaucher, who was a member of the anarcho-punk band Crass and whose work was a seminal part of the protest-art movement of the 1980s.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

ZDNet: A fake TikTok shop is Surfshark’s most-blocked phishing scam – how to steer clear. “TikTok Shop shoppers, beware: A counterfeit TikTok Shop generated over 320,000 phishing blocks between May and September 2026, or 19% of all global phishing domain blocks during that time, according to a Monday report from VPN provider Surfshark. As of this month, the domain is still active — a worrisome sign as we approach the Black Friday shopping period.”

Politico: Europe’s supermarkets hit by new wave of cyberattacks targeting fridges. “Several store managers told local media that refrigerator temperatures suddenly spiked to up to 50 degrees Celsius. This mirrors the French incidents last month, in which attackers appeared to remotely manipulate the fridges’ defrosting mechanisms so that they overheated.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

NiemanLab: Creators who show their sources build trust, survey finds. “About one in five U.S. adults regularly gets their news from news creators on social media platforms, but it can be difficult for audiences to suss out which personalities to trust amid an avalanche of misinformation, hot takes, and polarizing content. New research spearheaded by a team of journalists and political scientists shows that giving audiences a peek into the reporting process can help bolster their trust in the news.”

Engaging Places: Beyond Economic Impact: Are We Building Sustainable Museums?. “The Maryland Museums Association recently released its Economic Impact Study of Maryland Museums, prepared by Parker Strategy Group using data from fiscal year 2025. It’s an impressive report that provides museum advocates with valuable evidence of the contributions museums make to Maryland’s economy. The report also includes case studies of four museums and recommendations for strengthening the field. But what caught my attention wasn’t the economic impact figures.” 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.

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University of Toronto: Sharing Korean Canadian stories far and wide. “As the U of T community continues celebrating Korean Heritage Month, a new digitization project led by the Cheng Yu Tung East Asian Library (EAL) will soon expand access to a significant period of Korean Canadian history for university researchers and beyond. The Korea Times Canada is one of Canada’s longest-running Korean-language publications. Founded in 1971, the newspaper covers local news and information for the Korean Canadian community, including reporting on immigration, businesses and organizations, and cultural activities.”

Found in my RSS feeds: ReaderFunded. From the About page: “ReaderFunded is a search engine over the web that its own readers pay for. A site is in the index only when real people fund it directly – a membership, a donation, a paid subscription, a sponsorship – and only when that funding is verified both ways: the site links to its funding page, and the funding page names the site back.” A very interesting idea.

Newsshooter: CameraKit & LensKit now available as a web database with a lot of previously paywalled info available for free. “Popular iOS apps, CameraKit and LensKit now have a web database with a lot of previously paywalled info available for free. These tools are a great resource and provide an easy and reliable way to check specs for over 200 cameras and over 2000 lenses.”

AROUND THE SEARCH & SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

SiliconANGLE: Google, Anthropic and others to support new AI crawling opt-out standard. “Google LLC, Microsoft Corp., Anthropic PBC and OpenAI Group PBC today announced plans to support an upcoming website crawling standard. The technology will enable website operators to block artificial intelligence developers from using their content to train their models.”

New York Times: How IShowSpeed Became the Most Influential Streamer in the World. “It was Day 23 of the Speed Does America bus tour: a month straight on the road, finding adventures and creating chaos while livestreaming on YouTube 24 hours a day. At the beginning of the tour, Speed had 36 million subscribers; at any given time, tens if not hundreds of thousands of fans were tuned in. That meant a lot of planning and a lot of improvisation — any way to turn a small moment into a potentially viral event.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Mashable: Samsung TVs might use the mics of connected devices to listen to you, researcher says. “On the social media platform X, cybersecurity researcher @log4j shared that an investigation into Samsung smart TVs found that televisions without a mic will scan for connected devices that are equipped with a microphone. The smart TV will then utilize the audio data collected from the soundbar or other connected Bluetooth devices.”

Euronews: Ukraine and Russia say air raid alert apps hit by cyberattacks after truce ends. “Ukraine said on Sunday it suspected its air raid alert system had been compromised, after baseless alerts of a radiation threat appeared on the app. And hours later, Russia also announced its emergency warnings app came under a ‘massive cyberattack’ on Monday, in an apparent exchange of blows as their longest truce came to an end.”

Association of Research Libraries: US Register of Copyrights Intends to Recommend Renewing Text-and-Data Mining Exemption, Acknowledges License Limitations. “At the beginning of this Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) rulemaking cycle, Authors Alliance and the Library Copyright Alliance (LCA) petitioned to renew the text-and-data mining (TDM) exemption for literary works and motion pictures. The exemption permits researchers to circumvent digital locks in order to assemble and annotate their own research corpora of copyrighted works, and has enabled individual research projects while contributing to the development of new research methods.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

American Alliance of Museums: Cracking the Gen Z Code: How Museums Are Rethinking Membership to Engage Younger Audiences. “Gen Z perceives museums as vital spaces for processing complex emotions, confronting challenging topics, and building community but also as third places where they can have unique and fun experiences with others. Furthermore, younger audiences perceive museums as tools for identity building and places where they can explore fluid subcultures, refine their aesthetic tastes, and articulate their personal stories.”

OptFOREST: OptGERM: a new open database on how young trees respond to a warming climate. “A new study presents OptGERM, an open database developed within OptFORESTS that follows 15,774 seeds from six European tree species to help understand how the earliest life stages of trees respond to warming.”

Axel Valdez: I’m in Love with the Fediverse. “Within the first 10 minutes on X, you’re already angry at somebody. On Threads, you’ve read the same post ten times, each from a different ‘author.’ On Instagram, you probably already feel inadequate. The first 10 minutes on Mastodon are pure silence. An empty container waiting to be filled with the people and things you actually want to see.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

UC Santa Barbara: Finding People When GPS Fails. “Restoring communications is critical, but connectivity alone cannot tell rescuers where people are or how conditions are changing. UC Santa Barbara electrical and computer engineering professor Upamanyu Madhow is leading research aimed at helping wireless networks fill that information gap, using the same signals that connect people and devices to locate individuals and detect movement, even when visibility is limited.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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

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EurekAlert: Fireside Project publishes largest-ever dataset on real-world psychedelic support interactions. “Fireside Project today announced the publication of ‘The Fireside Database: Large-Scale Evidence from 25,419 Psychedelic Support Interactions’ in Science Advances, providing researchers and policymakers with an unprecedented empirical window into psychedelic use and support outside clinical settings. The study analyzes 25,419 interactions with Fireside Project’s Psychedelic Support Line conducted by 220 trained peer supporters between April 2021 and February 2026, along with 2,777 post-interaction satisfaction surveys.”

Found in my Calishat Snaps: Celebrating Karnataka. Karnataka is a state in India. From the About letter: “These films were scattered across the internet, on channels big and small, some of them hard to find. I searched for them and brought them together in one place, for anyone trying to learn about the cultures, the people and the stories of this land, and for anyone who simply loves a good documentary. It is also part of my own journey of learning Kannada, one film at a time. So here are 220 films. Watch them slowly; these are real lives, not performances.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Associated Press: What to know about the $6.3B hack on Binance, likely the biggest-ever crypto theft. “Binance, the world’s biggest cryptocurrency exchange, said Friday that hackers stole more than $6 billion in what appears to be the largest cryptocurrency heist on record. Blockchain firms have pointed to the attack coming from a North Korean hacking unit…. Here’s what we know about the hack, possible North Korean involvement and Binance’s investigation.”

The Hill: Binance recovers 90 percent of stolen assets from hack. “Cryptocurrency exchange Binance said Saturday that it was able to replenish 90 percent of the stolen assets ‌after a $6.3 billion hack of its platform.”

AROUND THE SEARCH & SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

CNBC: Reddit shares sink on weak sales guidance and plans login requirement test as Google search traffic shrinks. “Reddit plans to require all users to create official accounts to access the social media platform, marking a major departure for the site known as ‘the front page of the internet.’ The company revealed the change Thursday as part of its third-quarter earnings, in which it beat on the top and bottom lines, but provided weak fourth-quarter sales guidance. The company’s shares dropped over 15% after its numbers were released.”

Euromaidan Press: A Russian disinformation campaign cloned Euromaidan Press to blame Ukraine for Russia’s own strike on Kramatorsk (we took the fake down). “The fabrication is part of a years-long Russian disinformation campaign to impersonate and clone trusted news brands, predominantly in Europe, and publish false reports under their names. The disinformation research project Gnida tied our case to Storm-1516, one of several overlapping Russian operations, alongside the older Doppelganger, and NewsGuard, which reached out to us while preparing its own debunk, attributes the fake to the same operation.”

Associated Press: In Afghanistan, musicians defy music ban to keep traditions alive. “The Taliban who seized power in 2021 have prohibited anything but religious music — unaccompanied vocal chanting — with the ban enforced by the feared morality police of the Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice…. Yet for many, music is in their blood. It has flowed through their families for generations, and the thought of never playing again is unbearable. Every so often, some pull out their instruments and play in secret. A knock at the door could mean danger. Still, they play.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Reuters: US files lawsuit claiming Google wouldn’t give employee new job following military leave. “The US filed a lawsuit accusing Google of failing to give an employee his old job back or find him a similar job after he took one year of military leave as a US Army reservist. Thursday’s lawsuit in Manhattan federal court is a rare instance of the US government suing a private employer for violating the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act of 1994 (USERRA), which protects the civilian employment of military personnel called to active duty.”

Kyiv Independent: Russian general charged in absentia for missile strike on museum dedicated to 18th century Ukrainian philosopher. “A Russian lieutenant general has been charged in absentia with ordering the strike on the Kharkiv Oblast museum dedicated to 18th-century philosopher Hryhorii Skovoroda, the Prosecutor General reported on Oct. 29. On May 6, 2022, a Russian missile struck the museum, located in the village of Skovorodynivka, some 55 kilometers (about 35 miles) from the regional capital. The strike did not completely destroy the museum, but left it in serious disrepair.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Bored Panda: 22 Stunning Pumpkin Photos To Get You In The Halloween Spirit, Shared By The World Food Photography Awards. “With Halloween just around the corner, it’s the perfect time to appreciate one of the season’s most recognizable symbols: pumpkins! To celebrate, the World Food Photography Awards sponsored by Bimi® has shared 22 pumpkin photos from its archive, featuring work by photographers from around the world.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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

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Spotted on Reddit: Find Calvin and Hobbes. From the GitHub page: “A searchable, browsable archive of every Calvin and Hobbes comic strip (1985–1995) with full-text transcripts, a calendar grid, and collection browsing.” The special syntax are a dream!

State of New York: New York State Department of Health Announces the Launch of a Comprehensive Seasonal Respiratory Virus Dashboard. “The New York State Department of Health today announced the launch of a new Seasonal Respiratory Virus Dashboard. The Department’s longstanding reporting has now expanded to include a new dashboard encompassing influenza, COVID-19 and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), offering a more comprehensive view of respiratory illness trends statewide. The new dashboard provides a visual snapshot of laboratory-confirmed cases and hospitalizations associated with flu, COVID, and RSV with options to view data by geographic location and track trends over time.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

The Register: UK Biobank back online soon, months after someone tried to sell 500k people’s data on Alibaba. “UK Biobank’s Research Analysis Platform (UKB-RAP) has locked out all medical researchers trying to access its dataset since the April attack, which led to all 500,000 volunteers’ data being listed for sale on Chinese ecommerce website Alibaba. More than 20,000 researchers use the dataset provided by the cloud-based platform. They upload research projects and run experiments informed by the genomic data UKB collected from 40-to-69-year-olds between 2006 and 2010.”

AROUND THE SEARCH & SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Sheets.works: The people holding up the internet. “Billions of phones run on code looked after by a handful of people. We counted them from the code itself.”

Fast Company: This free creative app is like Internet Archive meets Pinterest. “​Clipart Studio​ is a website that simulates the experience of cutting up magazines to make a collage. You can page through real vintage magazines, virtually ‘cut’ what you want, and put everything together in any way that suits your fancy.”

The Guardian: ‘I know I can do anything’: new archive of AS Byatt’s papers looks inside the writer’s extraordinary mind. “The collection comprises 68 boxes of working notebooks, manuscripts, correspondence, personal diaries and documents from Byatt’s early life. It includes handwritten drafts of Possession, which won the 1990 Booker prize, and material relating to her 1978 novel The Virgin in the Garden and The Children’s Book, which was shortlisted for the Booker prize in 2009. According to the British Library’s curators, it is one of the most significant contemporary literary acquisitions the library has made in recent years.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Publishing Perspectives: In Letter to the Court, Textbook Authors Complain of Unfair Process, Splits in Anthropic Settlement. “This week, Kim Pawlak, Executive Director of the Textbook and Academic Authors Association (TAA), a nonprofit organization representing some 4,000 textbook and academic authors, filed a letter with the court sharing members’ complaints about a confusing claims process, and unfair settlement splits being claimed by publishers.” Like PEARSON, in my experience.

BBC: Ofcom outlines age check methods ahead of social media ban for under-16s. “Ofcom has set out its recommendations for the most effective ways to identify which of the UK’s millions of social media users are aged over 16. Under the UK’s social media ban – which is due to come into force in March next year – those under that age will be prevented from accessing ten of the biggest platforms, including Instagram, TikTok and Snapchat.”

DigitalTrends: Your search engine could be hijacked by a Chrome extension that barely does anything. “Security firm Socket says it found over 300 Chrome extensions that quietly swap a user’s default search engine and route every search through servers controlled by the people behind them before it reaches Bing or Yahoo. Even more alarming, these extensions have reportedly racked up roughly 13.4 million installs over the past decade.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Android Police: I am finally giving up on Google Keep, here’s why. “It’s simple, lightweight, available across all my devices, works flawlessly with Gemini and does exactly what you would expect from a basic note-taking tool. However, as my workflow evolved, I started noticing the limitations I had ignored for years. Meanwhile, competing apps have evolved into powerful productivity tools without necessarily sacrificing ease of use.”

British Library: Digital duplication and environmental sustainability. “Sustainability researchers are beginning to delve into the complexities of the digital landscape – every digital object we create, store, preserve, and access relies on physical infrastructure consuming energy. While much attention has been paid to the environmental impact of data centres and AI, the duplication of digital content is an aspect of digital sustainability that is still largely unexplored. During my six-month placement at the British Library, I aim to address this gap in knowledge and learn more about the environmental footprint of these vast global digital library collections.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

University of Kentucky: Study finds expanding hemp could boost Kentucky’s water quality, ecological diversity. “The study examined what happens to Kentucky’s environment when hemp constitutes a larger share of the state’s farmland. The team found that more hemp means more crop diversity, which is linked to cleaner water and a wider variety of birds.” 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.

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NEW RESOURCES

Centre for European Studies and Comparative Politics: PartySOME: new tool tracks what political parties talk about on social media . “What political issues do parties address on social media, and how do their priorities change over time? Which parties are the most active, and on which social media platforms? The new, open, interactive dashboard partysome.org provides an opportunity to explore how political parties communicate online, and what they talk about while doing it. Updated in real time, it tracks social media posts from 478 political parties across 38 countries in the Western world (including all EU countries), going back as far as 2005.”

JewishLink: Touro University Unveils Project Zikaron, a Digital Archive Preserving Jewish Communities Worldwide. “Touro University unveiled Project Zikaron, a digital archive containing more than 1.2 million pages of historical materials documenting over 16,000 Jewish communities worldwide, including thousands destroyed during the Holocaust.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Sky News: Google owner Alphabet suffers its worst-ever day on stock market as value plunges $500bn. “Shares in Google’s parent company Alphabet have suffered their worst-ever day on the US stock market, falling more than 12% and knocking around half a trillion dollars off its value. It’s the second-biggest daily market cap loss ever – just behind Nvidia’s $593bn loss on 27 January 2025.”

Reuters: Meta, TikTok, X lose legal challenge against UK watchdog over online safety data demands. “Meta, TikTok and X lost a legal challenge against British regulator Ofcom on ‌Friday over information requests made under the Online Safety Act, in one of the first tests of Britain’s nascent online safety regime.”

9to5 Google: Google Maps update now shows you the Fall foliage along your route . “Available in ‘applicable US metros’ through the end of November, Google Maps will now show colorful Fall foliage along your route. This means that Maps will show trees along the side of the road with a pop of orange.”

AROUND THE SEARCH & SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

IGN: Archive of Our Own Could Be Down for Up to 4 Weeks After Going Dark for Emergency Maintenance. “Popular fanfiction site Archive of Our Own, commonly known as AO3, went down for maintenance early this morning. Now, the website is claiming it may take up to a month to come back online.”

Mother Jones: The Mysterious Disappearance (And Reappearance) of Jezebel’s Archives. “Over the course of the last few days, a huge number of articles at the feminist website Jezebel went offline, many of them investigative and analytical stories concerning subjects like abortion, sex, rape, pornography and pedophilia. Former Jezebel staffers—including me—began receiving messages from people familiar with the site’s current owners, the media company Paste, warning us to check our own archives and try to preserve what we could of our work.”

DigitalTrends: YouTube’s next big upgrade could make videos use 30% less data. “YouTube videos could soon look better without eating quite so much data, right? Thankfully, the platform plans to introduce a new video format called AV2 on its web player in early 2027, promising more efficient streaming and potentially fewer playback hiccups on slower internet connections. The big headline is a roughly 30% improvement in compression efficiency over AV1, YouTube’s existing video format.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

TechCrunch: Applebee’s exposed customers’ personal data after leaving database password in app. “Applebee’s has fixed a security flaw that allowed anyone to access the personal information of its registered customers, after a researcher found a password for an internal database inside Applebee’s mobile app, TechCrunch has learned.”

EWTN News: Under the eyes of social media, Swiss Guards learn to handle threats with discretion. “The pope’s personal security, the Pontifical Swiss Guard, has lengthened its training for new recruits amid increased concerns over optics in an age when everything can be filmed by anyone with a cellphone.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

The Conversation: Friday essay: forget Big Brother, propaganda is now a form of hybrid warfare. “Hybrid warfare can be seen as an evolution of the propaganda wars of the 20th century. But it is no longer the top-down mind control of an Orwellian Big Brother regime. It works from the bottom up, through networks of allure rather than systems of command, gaining influence through online platforms, its disinformation campaigns amplified through bot farms and AI generated images. The hooks are grievance and a sense of thwarted entitlement, and they work at the upper and lower ends of the socio-economic ladder.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Matador Network: Visit Iceland Will Send a Real Knitter to Your Dumb Meeting so You Can Skip It. “The robot that silently joins your Zoom call to take notes now has competition, and it’s wearing a handmade wool sweater. On Oct. 29, Visit Iceland launched its ‘AI Knittakers’ campaign, where the AI stands for ‘Authentic Icelandic.’ It’s an alternative to the AI notetakers now ubiquitous in many online meetings, designed to free you up from ‘could’ve been an email’ meetings. The concept is straightforward: pick a knittaker and invite them to your meeting in lieu of attending. But it gets better.” 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.

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North Dakota Monitor: New Legacy Fund website makes investments more accessible but transparency issue lingers. “North Dakota has launched a new website aiming to make Legacy Fund investments more transparent to the public. The long-awaited website allows users to see where and how the state has invested taxpayer money through the Legacy Fund, a sovereign wealth fund fueled by oil taxes, which is valued at $15 billion.”

JSM Culture: Michelle Handelman’s 400-Item Digital Archive Makes Queer Cultural Memory Public. “A screening flyer, a VHS cover mockup and a fundraising packet can hold as much history as a finished film. Together, those working materials show how an idea moved through a community, found an audience and survived the pressures around it. That wider record is now easier to enter through the Feminist Institute Digital Archive, where more than 400 items from filmmaker, visual artist and writer Michelle Handelman’s career have been gathered into a new capsule collection.”

Found in my Calishat Snaps: Sixteen Colors. “Sixteen Colors is an online archive for ANSI and ASCII artpacks. The artform was originally intended for display on computer textmode consoles. It gained popularity in the early nineties with the rise of dial-up Bulletin Board Systems (BBS).”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Moscow Times: Yandex Suspends 2026 Guidance After Data Centers Come Under Fire. “Yandex announced Thursday that it was withdrawing its 2026 financial guidance following a series of Ukrainian drone strikes against its data centers earlier this month, a move that triggered the tech giant’s stock to fall slightly in afternoon trading.”

CyberScoop: Leaked DHS employee archive, Icepick, faces challenges to stay online. “A company working on behalf of the Department of Homeland Security sought to cut off online access to information on more than 41,000 employees that hacktivists said they obtained from a database breached at DHS. A search tool for the database, named Icepick, went offline for a spell before coming online again Thursday under a different registrar.”

Reuters: Meta settles with teen during trial testing claims social media caused depression, eating disorders. “Meta Platforms has ​settled with a teen plaintiff who accused the company of designing Instagram and Facebook to be addictive, causing her mental ‌health problems and disordered eating, attorneys for the plaintiff said on Friday. The settlement came after jury selection began on Wednesday for a trial that was slated to test the claims of two teens, identified as S.J. and K.D.B., against Meta and Snapchat parent Snap Inc.”

AROUND THE SEARCH & SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

The Citizen (South Africa): How a six minute TikTok love story became a South African novel. “It all began with a cellphone on her car dashboard and a six-minute fictional love story that millions of viewers fell in love with. It was a series on TikTok called Thato wa Ngwanyana, and it’s crossed over into the novel Good Things Keep Happening to Me.”

Retail Gazette: Bodycare builds 700-strong micro-influencer network. “The health and beauty retailer has partnered with PMC to develop AIMEE, a platform that analyses data on customers, stock, social media trends and store performance. The system is designed to help Bodycare make decisions on stock allocation, demand forecasting and local marketing, using insights from its network of micro- and nano-influencers.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Brussels Times: Belgian Finance Ministry hit by cyberattack, MyMinfin and other services offline. “The digital services of the Belgian Ministry of Finance are currently affected by a cyberattack, making MyMinfin and several other services temporarily unavailable. However, there are no indications of a data breach or that any data has been compromised, the tax authorities announced on Wednesday.”

Provincetown Independent: Influencer Indicted for Hunting White Shark off Wellfleet. “Christopher Stefanou, 30, was arraigned on Oct. 21 after a Barnstable County grand jury returned indictments against him on charges of cruelty to animals and four Dept. of Marine Fisheries (DMF) regulatory violations for fishing for a great white shark off Marconi Beach under cover of darkness with a European customer a year ago. Stefanou, who has a sizable online following for his shark fishing, posted a dramatic 17-minute video on social media documenting the expedition.” Good evening, Internet…

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

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WKRC: ‘Lord Farquuad’ addresses ‘massive’ 400-megawatt data center at city hall meeting. “When addressing the gathering, ‘Lord Farquaad’ issued the following statement: ‘I would like to begin my comments today by advising the rest of this room to please put off their foul stench, it smells like too many poors, and too many working class in this room. And that is not the interest that we are interested in serving in my town of Duloc, and we should not be interested in serving those interests here in San Diego either. We should be interested in representing the business community, that represents the AI data centers, that represents the ability to monitor our constituents with our Flock cameras and we know these two things go hand in hand, of course.'”

DATA CENTERS

Nevada Current: Data center project proposed on federal land gets sent back to square one. “Approval for the first-ever commercial data center on U.S. public lands was formally rejected on Thursday after a federal appeals board affirmed the Bureau of Land Management must conduct a separate environmental review, which in turn would have to be approved, before proceeding with the project.”

Politico: Texas officials huddled with tech companies before grid blitz. “Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has been cracking down on data centers for months, but less than a year ago his appointees and staffers were actively trying to bring projects to the state. On Dec. 16, 2025, two days before Texas announced sweeping changes to expedite grid access to data centers, Abbott’s top staff held a closed-door meeting with representatives of the state’s largest tech and transmission companies, according to records obtained by POLITICO.”

AI AGENTS

Gizmodo: Zuckerberg Wants to Build a Giant Online Network of AI Agents. “Meta’s goal of building a network of AI agents that work together to serve more than a billion people worldwide helps explain why the company isn’t ‘charging everyone up front’ to use Muse. The idea is to attract as many users as possible. It’s unclear exactly what this collaboration between agents will entail, but it raises questions about data sharing, an area where Meta has a checkered history.”

AI IN WORK

CNBC: Amazon’s anti-tokenmaxxing memo says engineers should be pickier about using AI. “Amazon laid out its AI usage guidelines for software engineers in a memo to staffers, and discouraged employees from turning to ‘tokenmaxxing’ in their push to embrace artificial intelligence tools. The memo, which was circulated internally in September and posted to the company’s website on Tuesday, revises how the company defines the role of software development engineers and managers in the age of AI.”

AI IN GOVERNANCE

West Side Rag: AI Street Cameras Tracking Parking Violations on the Upper West Side Taken Down. “For the past six months, the curb management company, Automotus, monitored parking behavior on the Upper West Side using AI-powered cameras. The temporary installation of two of the company’s ‘CurbSight’ AI cameras along Broadway between West 74th and 75th streets ended this week, and the pilot’s results are now being analyzed by the New York City Department of Transportation.”

Axios: Washington’s message to AI execs: Please shut up. “Even pro-AI government officials and lawmakers wish AI founders would do what every other major industry chief does — shut up and just build their products … safely.”

AI IN EDUCATION

Stanford Daily: Stanford removes all-white, all-male AI-generated depiction of marching band from website. “The Leland Stanford Junior University Marching Band (LSJUMB) is one of Stanford’s most photographed student organizations, having been featured on Stanford’s social media platforms and framed in campus buildings. But on Monday, members were shocked to find that Stanford had posted an AI-generated depiction of the group — all-white and all-male.”

Associated Press: Dartmouth provost resigns following accusations he used artificial intelligence for writing. “A top administrator at Dartmouth College has resigned after a faculty committee found he used artificial intelligence to shape his writing, including in a guest column in The Washington Post on AI cheating. The announcement Wednesday of Provost Santiago Schnell’s departure from the Ivy League university comes as colleges across the country grapple with how to transform teaching as more assignments can be completed with AI tools.”

AI FINANCE

TechCrunch: Anthropic’s IPO filing reveals its strategy for keeping enterprise customers hooked. “Anthropic is building the same kind of cross-product ecosystem that helped make tech companies like Amazon and Uber enormously sticky, and its S-1 suggests the strategy is working. More than half of customers spending at least $100,000 annually now use both the Claude platform and a first-party app like Claude Code or Cowork, up from about 30% at the end of last year.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Reuters: How one hacker used AI agents and a few thousand dollars to break into scores of sites. “Over the past couple of weeks, a cybersecurity researcher watched as a Chinese-speaking hacker broke into websites belonging to more than 100 companies, including farm equipment maker Deere, home appliance ​company SharkNinja and engine manufacturer Cummins. Yet the hacker did almost none of the work.”

New York Times: Owners of Elvis Presley’s Music Sue Anthropic for Copyright Infringement. “The owners of Elvis Presley’s music sued the artificial intelligence company Anthropic, saying it trained its models on more than 200 of Presley’s songs without their permission, and accusing it of copyright infringement. The suit, filed on Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California on behalf of several parties, seeks a jury trial and more than $41 million, or $150,000 per song, in damages.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

University of Maryland: App’s AI “Eyes” for Blind Users Fall Short, UMD Researchers Find. “A blind man points his phone at a pan and asks, ‘Are the sausages brown yet?’ The app he’s using responds out loud that some spots are still slightly pink. So a bit later, he takes another photo and asks again, and then again, about four times in all, until the food is fully cooked. What he really wanted, he later told researchers, was not a repetitive Q&A but useful advice: ‘Maybe it still looks pretty pink—stir a little more, maybe about five minutes.’ He was one of 11 participants, all of whom identify as blind, in a University of Maryland (UMD) study presented this year at a top human-computer interaction conference.”

NPR: How AI is transforming hurricane forecasts. “Hurricane forecasters are increasingly using artificial intelligence to make predictions — and they say the technology is rapidly transforming the field. When the first hurricane of the Atlantic season formed this month, an AI model beat out traditional models at predicting where it would go.”

The Independent: Bear-vision: The AI-powered tech designed to reduce dangerous polar bear encounters. “Artificial intelligence-powered ‘doorbell cameras’ are being trialled by an international team of specialists to alert local communities to approaching polar bears amid the growing threat of human conflict. Created by the conservation charity Polar Bears International, the initiative is part of a broader push to safeguard both human lives and wildlife as global warming escalates the frequency of hazardous interactions.” 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.

Spotted on Bluesky: Independent Journalism Atlas. From the About this project page: “The Independent Journalism Atlas is a wayfinder for an ecosystem most journalism coverage doesn’t cover — the thousands of independent creator-journalists building audiences, breaking news, and doing accountability work outside the institution. We’ve mapped 2,415 of them. We’re not done.”

Government of Canada: CRTC launches new database to make it easier to identify Canadian music. “The CRTC [Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission] is launching a free, downloadable music database that makes it easier for broadcasters, artists and the public to identify Canadian music. For the first time, information that broadcasters use to identify Canadian music is available in one place. The database brings together information previously spread across several industry sources, making it easier for Canadian artists to be discovered and played across the country.”

Bonnet House Museum & Gardens: Exploring Bonnet House From Anywhere: Our Digital Collections Are Now Live. “Through our new digital collections portal, we invite you to discover a wide variety of objects and materials from our holdings, offering a deeper look into the people, art, and history connected to the estate. At the present moment, you are able to explore the art of Frederic, Evelyn, as well as son Frederic Clay Bartlett, Jr. and daughter, Evie Lilly Lutz. Everything you see is housed right here at the museum, whether currently on display or carefully preserved in our climate-controlled storage.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Reuters: Meta loses appeals against interim measures imposed by French regulators. “Meta Platforms has lost its appeals against interim measures imposed by French regulators over media organisations’ ​publishing rights in the Paris Court of Appeals, the court said ‌on Thursday.”

Investing.com: Roblox shares slump 17% as user growth and guidance miss expectations. “The gaming platform reported a loss per share of $0.32 for the third quarter, beating the analyst estimate of a $0.43 loss. Revenue reached $1.57 billion, surpassing the consensus estimate of $1.46 billion and marking a 16% increase year-over-year.”

AROUND THE SEARCH & SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Associated Press: Pinterest: Q3 Earnings Snapshot. “Pinterest Inc. (PINS) on Thursday reported third-quarter earnings of $21.5 million. On a per-share basis, the San Francisco-based company said it had net income of 4 cents. Earnings, adjusted for one-time gains and costs, came to 46 cents per share. The results fell short of Wall Street expectations.”

TechSpot: Only one person in the world can play this free Steam game at a time. “These days, a big online game is one that can drop 100 strangers onto the same map at once. Jono, a free platformer that quietly landed on Steam earlier this month, goes in the opposite direction entirely: there’s exactly one playable character for the whole planet, and everyone who downloads it has to wait in line for a turn.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

New York Times: Binance Suspends Withdrawals After Crypto Hackers Steal $6.3 Billion. “Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, said on Thursday that it had halted withdrawals after it was attacked by hackers who made off with more than $6 billion in digital coins, in what could be the biggest crypto heist in history.”

Salt Lake Tribune: Utah files 14 criminal charges against Kalshi and its founders, says the site breaks the state’s gambling laws. “The state of Utah has filed 14 criminal charges, including 13 felony counts, against the prediction market site Kalshi and its co-founders, Tarek Mansour and Luana Lopes Lara, alleging the company has broken Utah law by promoting online gambling.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

The Conversation: Political information increasingly comes from pop culture, outside of partisan silos but where male creators – and sometimes misogyny – dominate. “Research on political polarization points to how people’s preferred news outlets and social media use create information silos, environments in which people primarily encounter views consistent with their own, further cementing those views. But this research often omits an important source of political information: popular culture, from influencers and podcasts to comedy, television and movies.”

STAT News: New atlas of colorectal tumors sheds light on why cancers in young people are more dangerous. “On Thursday, [Kimmie] Ng published a new study in Nature Medicine that may help illuminate critical differences between older and younger colorectal cancer patients. With 189 tumors, it’s the largest biological database — what researchers call a single cell atlas — of colorectal cancer tumors in patients ranging from their 20s to their 90s.”

Royal Botanic Gardens Kew: Kew launches global seed platform to tackle native seed bottleneck holding back nature restoration. “Today, the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (RBG Kew) launches the Seed Portal for Online Data (SeedPOD), a new open-access platform designed to tackle bottlenecks affecting global ecological restoration, by making native seed collections and the knowledge needed to grow them easier to discover.” Good evening, Internet…

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

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Center for North Carolina Politics & Public Service at Catawba College: Day 14 of NC Early Voting: So, So, So Close. “Funded by a grant from the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation and private donations to the N.C. Politics Center, [NC Elections Live] helps North Carolinians explore election results, compare voting patterns across election cycles, and better understand the state’s elections through publicly available data….the nonpartisan website draws its election data directly from publicly available files provided by the North Carolina State Board of Elections. The site is not affiliated with the State Board, county boards of elections, political parties, or campaigns.”

Jewish News: First Virtual Belarusian Jewish museum launches. “Before World War II, Belarus had a thriving Jewish population of an estimated 800,000 to 1 million people, making up around 14% to 15% of the total population, and more than 50% in cities like Minsk. An estimated 80% to 90% of Belarusian Jews (between 500,000 and 800,000 people) were murdered by Nazi Germany during the occupation between 1941 and 1943.”

About Manchester: Salford University to launch the Terry Eagleton Archive collection. “The University of Salford will launch a new archive collection from the internationally-celebrated literary scholar and cultural theorist Professor Terry Eagleton next month. Professor Eagleton, who was born in Salford, entrusted the collection to the University for its long-term preservation and research use. The extensive collection includes previously unseen manuscripts of his plays and poetry, cassette tapes, photos, handwritten notes and other material relating to his academic life, dating back from the early 1960s all the way to 2026.”

FastCompany: This map shows you which NYC restaurants are owned by private equity. “Via an interactive map of New York City, you can zoom in on any bar, restaurant, or café and learn whether it’s owned or backed by private equity or venture capital, and whether it’s public or privately owned.” Please note that “family ownership” can mean “owns a franchise of a restaurant chain.”

AROUND THE SEARCH & SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Bay Area Reporter: Meta silent after multiple Latino gay club social accounts felled. “Instagram and Facebook pages of two Latino LGBTQ clubs in Oakland were taken down last month. Despite the flurry of publicity surrounding alleged discrimination by Meta, Instagram’s parent company, spokespeople for the tech giant haven’t returned multiple requests for comment. The news comes as the issue continues to pop up for LGBTQ establishments nationwide. Anthem Orlando recently posted it had to make a new Instagram account.”

The Verge: TikTok is going after Yelp and Google Maps with an in-app restaurant guide. “The company on Wednesday announced the launch of Must Eat, a new section of the TikTok app built on 40 million posts, reviews, and comments about dining on the platform. The new feature uses videos and discussions of buzzy local businesses to create restaurant recommendation guides. Users can leave reviews of restaurants, call and make reservations, and search for nearby businesses on a map.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Minnesota Star Tribune: Conservative influencers face identity theft charges over Minnesota primary. “The Hennepin County Attorney’s Office has charged conservative influencers Cam Higby and James O’Keefe with felony counts of identity theft and unlawful voting after they disguised themselves and attempted to vote during the state primaries in August.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

BBC: BBC unveils Global Signals research into the global information landscape to respond to the threat of disinformation. “The BBC World Service has launched Global Signals, groundbreaking new research to provide a deeper assessment of the online information space. The research will strengthen the BBC’s ability to understand and respond to disinformation and help build information resilience.”

PsyPost: Feed recommendations are the most common way teens encounter self-harm content. “An analysis of data from the 2025 OxWell Student Survey found that about a third of 11- to 18-year-old students in England had come across self-harm content online in the past month. Most of these encounters were unintentional, and about two-thirds of exposed students said the content had appeared in their social media feeds or been suggested while they were browsing. Students who were lonelier, had experienced other online harms, or had poorer mental health were more likely to report exposure. The paper was published in Nature Mental Health.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Hackaday: DOOM Ported To A $30 Clamp Meter. “The clamp meter in question is the FNIRSI DMC-100, which can be had for the low price of just $30 or so if you know where to look. It’s a far cry from the many thousands of dollars you’d pay for a heavy old 486-based machine back in 1993. [Artur] got the doomgeneric engine running on the Artery AT32F415 chip that runs the clamp meter.” Good evening, Internet…

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

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