Showed up in my email: the Rhyme Game Rhyming Dictionary. “A free online rhyming dictionary. Type a word, get every perfect rhyme, judged on pronunciation with the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

WordPress: WordPress 7.1.1 Maintenance and Security Release. “This security and maintenance release features 17 bug fixes on Core, 19 bug fixes for the Block Editor, and 11 security fixes. Because this is a security release, it is recommended that you update your sites immediately.”

USEFUL STUFF

Lifehacker: 10 Hacks Every Vivaldi Browser User Should Know. “When you think about browsers, Vivaldi is probably not the first name that comes to mind—but it should be. This is a Chromium-based browser that focuses on adding so many features that you don’t need to install multiple apps to get things done. Vivaldi has been around for over a decade now, and has become a pretty complete product, though it continues to improve. I’ve been using the browser for while, and these are the best Vivaldi hacks I’ve found in my time.”

AROUND THE SEARCH & SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Forward Kentucky: Hey KY House Dems – someone stole your website. “At one time, the Democratic caucus in the Kentucky House of Representatives had their own website. Not any more. An Indonesian company now owns ‘KyHouseDems.com’ and is using it to redirect people to an online gambling site. Whoops.”

The Hindu: Meet the people keeping India’s culinary memories alive. “A community potluck spotlights heirloom dishes; dining out is slowly turning intimate, with immersive, story-driven meals around the Partition, for instance; and documenting culinary traditions through cookbooks and podcasts has become something families are taking note of. Is this growing interest in nostalgia-driven culinary experiences a passing trend, or does it reflect our society’s desire to reconnect with its roots?”

Mashable: MeganPlays has been on YouTube for 13 years. Here’s what she’s learned.. “She wasn’t thinking about brand deals, TikTok algorithms, audience retention, or the creator economy. A college freshman who had been gaming practically her entire life, Megan saw people uploading videos of themselves playing The Sims and had a simple thought: I could do that. So she did.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Futurism: Google Now Asking For Users’ Video Selfies to Verify Their Identities. “Starting this week, Google has begun asking users to take a video selfie to sign into their accounts, Search Engine Watch found. The feature remains optional, but it represents an eerie step towards making facial recognition a standard way to navigate the web, which the search engine giant is now heavily promoting.” NOPE.

Courthouse News Service: Conservationists sue EPA for records on lobbyists’ role in pesticide approval. “Conservationists sued the Environmental Protection Agency Thursday, demanding public records on the reapproval of a ‘dangerous, drift-prone’ pesticide they say biased political appointees influenced.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

McGill University: History, art and science join forces to unlock the mysteries of a 400-year-old book. “A major grant will enable McGill University Libraries to delve into the Libro di Piume, or Feather Book, an exceptional artifact created in Italy more than 400 years ago. This unique object contains 156 illustrations made from feathers and other organic materials, including approximately 100 bird depictions incorporating, beaks, feathers and feet.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Evanston Roundtable: Why some local trees have been sporting ‘smiles’ lately. “In an effort to learn a bit more about the trees that are his neighbors, [Nigel] Pitman bought a tree identification book several years ago and started identifying his local species with his kids. When they recognized a tree, the family would mark it with sidewalk chalk…. This summer, Pitman took his family activity and turned it into a bigger project through the city’s Love Your Block grant program.” 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.

Guttmacher Institute: Power to Decide and the Guttmacher Institute Launch New Interactive Resource Revealing the Gaps in Contraceptive Access Across the United States. “Today, Power to Decide and the Guttmacher Institute launched the Contraceptive Access Maps — a new interactive tool that depicts county-level alignment between women’s* self-defined contraceptive needs and clinic-based service availability. Where need and availability are misaligned, the county is considered to have a contraceptive access gap.”

USDA: USDA NASS Modernizes Data Visualization with Launch of AgInsights. “AgInsights integrates tabular data, charts, and maps into a single web-based interface, providing a comprehensive and interactive way to explore data, which was previously spread across different formats. Users can access comprehensive tabular data views similar to traditional PDF reports, but with added interactivity, making it easier to analyze and compare data.”

New-to-me, from Maps Mania: World Cinema Atlas. “World Cinema Atlas is an interactive globe featuring 170,000 films and TV series, each placed on the map according to where their stories take place. Zoom in on the globe and the lights turn into movie posters, revealing the films and series set in the locations you are exploring.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Reuters: US judge signals rejection of part of TikTok privacy settlement. “TikTok and ByteDance’s proposed $400 million settlement with the US Justice Department hit a hurdle on Friday after a federal judge indicated he would reject part ​of the agreement. TikTok and its Chinese parent company agreed in August to ‌settle allegations that the short-video app violated US children’s online privacy laws.

AROUND THE SEARCH & SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Breaking Belize News: Belize National Library Service and Information System and Amandala sign agreement to preserve and digitize Belize’s Documentary Heritage. “The Belize National Library Service and Information System (BNLSIS) and The Amandala Newspaper have signed a Digitization and Public Access Agreement aimed at preserving and expanding access to the newspaper’s historic records. The agreement, signed on September 8, 2026, will allow historical issues held at the National Heritage Library to be digitized and made more accessible for research, education and historical reference.”

The City Reporter: NYC Schools Restrict YouTube Use by Students Amid Screen Time Crackdown. “New York City is ratcheting up restrictions on students’ access to YouTube on school-issued devices, education officials told City Council members on Tuesday. The disclosure came just one day after Councilmembers Shekar Krishnan and Eric Dinowitz called on the city’s Education Department to restrict the video-sharing platform in schools, among other demands to restrict classroom technology.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Associated Press: Telehealth companies keep exposing their customers’ medical data. What should they do?. “Since the COVID-19 pandemic, scores of online health services have launched with the promise of quick, convenient access to drugs for ADHD, sexual dysfunction, anxiety, weight loss and more. Increasingly, though, government regulators are accusing these companies of deceptive, unethical business practices, including disclosing their customers’ health data, signing them up for hard-to-cancel subscriptions and bypassing real-time consultations with doctors.”

dpa: German intelligence sees rise in Russia-linked disinformation on Merz. “German intelligence has recorded a rise in disinformation spread about Chancellor Friedrich Merz that is believed to be linked to Russia, according to a media report published on Wednesday.”

Wall Street Journal: Polymarket’s Rush to Grow Left a Door Wide Open For Fraudsters. “Polymarket is doing everything in its power to woo new users and investors. In the process, said current and former employees and investors interviewed by The Wall Street Journal, the highflying company has struggled with compliance failures, legal challenges and software blunders. Rates of fraud remained elevated for months after the February attack, people familiar with the matter said, though they didn’t again reach 80%. In the wake of the incident, executives left and an internal investigation began.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Euronews: Thousands of suspicious accounts followed Swedish political voices, researchers say. “More than 8,500 X accounts were identified as suspicious in the run-up to Sweden’s general election, in which the centre-left opposition secured a narrow preliminary lead.”

CT Mirror: Opinion: What I learned building a voter guide at 17. “I can’t vote on November 3rd. I’m 17, a junior in high school. But the first ballot I ever saw was at North Street School in Greenwich, when my mom took me with her to vote. What I remember is her phone as she stood in the small booth, looking up the candidates one by one. What my mom needed that morning did exist. The voting records, campaign pages, local news stories are all available but scattered. I wanted to help and make it easier for people like her, so this summer I built Match2Vote, a free voter guide, paid for with earnings from my summer job.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

How-To Geek: I 3D printed a vinyl record and it actually played music (barely). “Now, I want to make it very clear right away that I never had any illusions about a 3D printed record sounding good. I also never thought of it as some sort of way to “pirate” physical media. This project was purely about answering the simple question, ‘can it be done?'” 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.

Financial Times: AI chatbots give wrong answers to financial queries ‘most of the time’. “The most popular AI models from ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot, Grok and Gemini provided wrong answers to financial queries 57 per cent of the time on average, according to research from technology firm Saturn. When asked more complex questions, such as those which involved more than one calculation, the AI models made mistakes in 88 per cent of cases on average. Some models gave wrong answers to 99 per cent of these harder questions.”

Deadline: Tilly Norwood Malfunctions During Piers Morgan Interview: “Seems I Had A Little Hiccup”. “Tilly Norwood, the ‘AI actress’ who has provoked existential anxiety in Hollywood, got a bit glitchy during an interview with Piers Morgan. Norwood, a generative AI creation from British company Particle6, switched language from English to Cantonese midway through the exchange, much to Morgan’s bemusement.”

ANTI-AI SENTIMENT

Reuters: In Silicon Valley, AI data center boom meets local resistance. “In ​Silicon Valley’s biggest city, residents and environmental groups are organizing against a wave of proposed data center projects that officials have courted ‌in a bid to position the city as a hub for AI infrastructure.”

DATA CENTERS

Literary Hub: Sally Rooney just defeated a data center.. “A West of Ireland data center objected to by novelist Sally Rooney has just had its planning permission overturned on the grounds that it breaches Irish national climate policy. The facility, which was granted planning permission last year despite pushback from local residents, was set to be built in Killala, Co Mayo by Mayo Data Hub Ltd, part of US firm Avaio Digital.”

Maryland Matters: Study warns of electricity shortages unless supply keeps pace with data center growth. “Rolling blackouts would happen more than 13 days a year in a “worst case future” scenario, where data center growth is unrestrained and electricity supplies remain tight, according to a report commissioned by Pennsylvania utility regulators. Even if new power plants are built over the next 15 years, as data center projects come online, the regional electricity grid would fall short of demands six times per decade, on average, according to the report.”

AI AGENTS

Search Engine Journal: I Made My Website Charge AI Agents A Penny Per Page, Then I Watched Claude Pay It. “On the morning of September 15, five payments went through. Each one settled on a blockchain and has a public transaction hash. One came from Claude Code, running on my machine and using a wallet I’d set up for it. To be clear, all the payments so far have come from my own agents. No search crawler is turning up and paying me. The payments also use testnet USDC, which means the tokens have no real monetary value. But the payment process works.”

AI IN GOVERNANCE

Alaska Beacon: Alaska senators question legality of state land transfer for possible Mat-Su data centers. “The prospect of data centers in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough has raised public concern and scrutiny of a proposed state land transfer of nearly 20,000 acres to the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority. Now, Alaska lawmakers are weighing in with legal concerns about the state’s proposal.”

Georgia Recorder: Former Georgia regulator who helped set policy for data centers now works for company building them. “Tricia Pridemore, who until recently served as an elected utility regulator in Georgia, is now working for a corporation that builds data centers primarily in the southeast. Pridemore, who is a Republican, will serve as the executive vice president of energy, regulatory and policy for DC BLOX, where she will represent the company in policy discussions with lawmakers, regulatory bodies and utility providers.”

AI IN WORK

New York Times: F.A.A. to Roll Out New A.I. Tool for Washington Airports. “The Trump administration plans to roll out a new A.I. air traffic control tool designed to predict and prevent flight delays in the Washington region starting Monday, as the opening step of an eventual nationwide deployment.”

AROUND THE AI WORLD

Futurism: The Winner of Elon Musk’s AI “Odyssey” Contest Will Make You Laugh Out Loud. “The problems run deep. The Cyclops Polyphemus is depicted with three eyes, which feels disqualifying. And just a few cuts later, the famously monocular giant is at least four times as large as he was before. The other creatures and gods look like something out of a mobile game; Poseidon emerges from the sea appearing conspicuously cartoonish and impossibly muscled, before smashing Odysseus’s ship and his crew of photorealistic, ripped men.”

The Guardian: Feeling overwhelmed by the AI doom loop? Here’s the essential reading list to make sense of it all. “We’ve compiled an essential reading list of smart books that explain and critique the AI industry; books that, while flawed, illustrate key viewpoints in the AI debates; and a few books that provide deeper political and social context, including some works of speculative fiction.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

ABC News: Grandmother falsely accused of bank theft after alleged AI facial recognition match sues for $10M. “A Tennessee grandmother who was falsely accused of bank theft crimes in North Dakota and detained for six months is suing for $10 million, alleging in a federal lawsuit that police improperly relied on AI facial recognition technology to arrest her for crimes she did not commit.”

Variety: Sony Music, Universal Music Group Sue Suno Over Label-Backed Model: ‘Fruit of the Same Poisoned Tree’. “Sony Music Entertainment and Universal Music Group have a new grievance with AI start-up Suno. The two music companies on Friday filed a new, 45-page lawsuit in the U.S. District Court in the District of Massachusetts against the AI music-generation company, alleging Suno’s new model, backed by several other music companies, still infringe Sony Music and UMG’s copyrighted works.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Pew (PEW PEW PEW PEW PEW PEW PEW!): Globally, More People Expect AI to Cause Job Loss Than Growth. “As policymakers, business leaders and experts engage in a rapidly moving debate about the potential economic impacts of artificial intelligence, ordinary citizens around the world are concerned. In 34 of 37 countries Pew Research Center surveyed earlier this year, people tend to believe AI will lead to fewer jobs rather than more jobs.”

UNESCO: UNESCO- ICOM Global Survey finds museums embracing AI, but governance and capacity lag behind. “Surveying more than 400 museums across 90 countries, the study finds that 57% of responding museums are already using AI, while 55% have no internal AI policy, strategy or guidelines.” 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.

Spotted in my RSS feeds: RhymeHamster. From the brief site tour: “Type a word. RhymeHamster fetches real rhymes — curated by a working lyricist, with no filler and no nonsense words.”

Spectrum News: New York state launches new measles database. “On Tuesday, the state Department of Health’s new measles database reported 51 positive cases of measles in New York. Most of them were listed in upstate New York. That’s an increase compared to last year, when upstate confirmed 28 positive cases throughout the entire year. Health officials say there has been an increased number of reports in rural areas.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Smithsonian Transcription Center: Welcome to the new Smithsonian Transcription Center!. “Today, we’re revealing a redesigned website for the first time since Smithsonian Transcription Center was created in 2013. In the last 13 years, over 100,000 people have worked together to transcribe more than 1.5 million pages of Smithsonian collections. This refresh is rooted in our gratitude for everything we’ve accomplished together and our excitement for everything still to come.”

Yahoo Finance: Yahoo Finance and Polymarket End Prediction Market Partnership. “Yahoo Finance has ended a partnership with Polymarket in which the financial news platform used Polymarket data to create a prediction market hub on its website.”

BBC: US dictionary adds 1,400 words, including neckbeard, trash panda and cuffing season. “Merriam-Webster, America’s oldest dictionary publisher, has added 1,400 new words, including glow-up, looksmaxxing, meme coin and trash panda – the affectionate nickname for raccoons.”

AROUND THE SEARCH & SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Gizmodo: Snap Specs Hands-On: Dorky, Fun, and Potentially Too Ambitious. “After nearly a decade in the game, Snap is finally ready to deliver its AR glasses to the world. I covered Snap Specs back in June when they were first announced, but at the time I hadn’t gotten the chance to try them out for myself, which naturally left me with a lot of questions about what they’re like to wear—questions I can now (mostly) shed some light on.”

NiemanLab: The Library Newsroom Project could be coming to a library near you. “After several years leading engagement journalism initiatives at ProPublica, The New York Times, and The City (now The City Reporter), and securing an MLIS from library school along the way, [Terry] Parris Jr. has spent the past year as a John S. Knight fellow at Stanford refining his vision for the Library Newsroom Project. Through the project’s first pilot, a partnership with the Brooklyn Public Library’s Sunset Park branch, a group of community members has published more than a dozen editions of a free, print monthly bulletin called the Sunset Park Sun.”

The Register: Nine-year-old runs up $118,000 bill on dad’s corporate credit card advertising his Roblox YouTube channel. “There’s kids running up a few hundred bucks on in-app purchases, and then there’s the case of nine-year old YouTuber Mighty Mike Plays, who just cost his dad $118,000 – and possibly his job – after running a bunch of Google ad campaigns for his channel on papa’s company credit card.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Reuters: France probes misuse of smart glasses in sexual harassment cases. “Paris prosecutors have opened a criminal probe into suspected sexual harassment involving smart glasses, while French data protection authorities have received complaints from businesses, as countries around the world grapple with the devices’ social impact.”

Associated Press: New laws trigger a fresh legal fight over Nazi-looted art in Los Angeles and Auschwitz museums. “Jewish heirs of Holocaust victims and their representatives have filed two lawsuits in California staking their claims to Nazi-looted paintings that still hang on the walls of prominent museums in Los Angeles and Auschwitz. This pair of lawsuits are the first to be filed after the recent passage of laws by California and Congress, which strengthen U.S.-based claims to artwork that were forcibly taken from Jewish families during World War II.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

European Food Information Council: Supplements and weight loss top misinformation themes in European influencer posts analysed. “Among the misinformation narratives examined in the influencer posts, supplements were the most frequently identified theme, appearing in 474 posts, followed by weight loss in 256, superfoods in 242 and detox in 76. These figures describe posts containing the specific misinformation narratives studied; they do not imply that every discussion of supplements or weight loss is misleading.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

New York Times: Can Two Friends Complete a Game No One Has Ever Finished?. “…there is one particularly notorious war game from 1979, the Campaign for North Africa, a board game so detailed, complex and cumbersome to play that it is thought that no one has ever actually finished it (including its creator). Now two guys from Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England, are trying. James Purcell and Andrew Taeger have spent nearly two years just mastering the rules and practicing, and they are ready to start playing the game for real.” 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.

Senator Raphael Warnock: VIDEO: Warnock Calls Out AI Developers, Social Media Companies, After Bizarre Health Hoax. “The AI-generated posts claimed that Senator Warnock had collapsed on stage, and another said he had undergone surgery and was recovering from cancer. In response, Senator Warnock stressed the need for congressional action on AI.”

CNN: Exclusive: US military had close call after using AI for false intelligence report, sources say. “The intelligence report, circulated across the US military this spring in the midst of the war with Iran, immediately set off alarm bells: A Chinese ship in the Middle East was transporting components of a nuclear weapons program.”

DATA CENTERS

Financial Times: Oracle’s $18bn data centre debt under strain amid local pushback. “About $18bn of loans tied to a data centre leased to Oracle in New Mexico slid into stressed territory on Friday, highlighting investors’ fear that increasing local backlash will derail the tech group’s massive AI infrastructure build-out.”

AI AGENTS

Tedium: The Worst Spam Emails. “Making sense of iLands, the company whose AI agents emailed me half a dozen times in two days offering to do my research. Turns out they’re just bots trying to keep their own lights on by trying to take my job.”

AI IN GOVERNANCE

NextGov: GSA’s web design system head replaced with Treasury AI engineer. “Sam Corcos — the Treasury Department’s chief information officer who recently took on three roles at the General Services Administration — has tapped Ryan Parker, an AI engineer at the Treasury Department, to lead the U.S. Web Design System, or USWDS, according to two sources familiar with the matter. The move comes after GSA unexpectedly placed Anne Petersen, the longtime leader of the USWDS, on administrative leave a few weeks ago, the sources said.”

The Verge: Virginia governor creates an AI task force and moves to restrain data centers. “Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger ordered the state government to take steps that could empower local communities to have a larger say in data center development and slow down approvals in a state that is already home to the data center capital of the world.”

AI LEGISLATION

New York Times: Congress Has Plenty of Ideas to Regulate A.I. Nearly All Are Stalled.. “Over the past two years, Democrats and Republicans in Congress have issued a battery of measures that would slow down A.I. development in response to safety concerns, limit access to the technology to address national security risks and tend to the potential economic fallout from mass automation. But lawmakers have largely failed to enact any of the proposals, having been stymied by persistent partisan divisions and, in some cases, fierce lobbying by the tech industry.”

Politico: Newsom signs bill to help prepare Hollywood workers for AI. “While calling for more aggressive action on safety protocols for artificial intelligence, Gov. Gavin Newsom has signed legislation designed to help prepare entertainment workers for an industry increasingly shaped by the technology, his office said Friday. The legislation is modest — establishing a $15 million pilot program for training at community colleges. But it is also one of California’s first laws squarely focused on Hollywood and AI.”

AI IN WORK

Reuters: Lawyer for State Farm fined over AI hallucination in Los Angeles lawsuit. “A California judge has ordered a lawyer for insurance giant State Farm to pay a $999.99 fine after finding that some ​of her filings included nonexistent cases stemming from her use of ‌an artificial intelligence program.”

AROUND THE AI WORLD

CNBC: OpenAI and Anthropic are making 10 times more revenue than all Chinese AI models combined, research group Rhodium says. “China’s artificial intelligence models may be enjoying rapid adoption but that isn’t yet translating into revenue, raising questions about company valuations. All of China’s AI models combined generate only about 10% of the revenue reported for OpenAI and Anthropic, U.S.-based research firm Rhodium Group said in estimates published Thursday. ”

Engadget: Snap introduces a standalone AI assistant, Specs Intelligence . “Unlike most of its social media rivals, Snap hasn’t made many big bets on AI. The company has added a bunch of generative AI-powered features to Snapchat, but it hasn’t made the technology a central focus. Now, the company is introducing a new standalone AI assistant alongside its redesigned AR glasses.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Orlando Sentinel: Docs in A.I. copyright suit reveal startling admission by Microsoft exec over ‘astonishing theft’. “A senior executive at Microsoft believes A.I. systems built on the work of others will be seen as “an astonishing theft of unprecedented proportions” and possibly the greatest robbery of labor in human history, according to court documents unredacted Thursday in an ongoing Manhattan lawsuit.”

Arkansas Advocate: Entergy Arkansas drops lawsuit over newspaper’s publication of data center agreement details. “Entergy Arkansas is dropping the lawsuit it filed over a newspaper publishing details about a West Memphis data center agreement that came from documents the utility said were released in error by state regulators. The utility on Wednesday filed a notice of dismissal of its lawsuit against the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, the Arkansas Times and central Arkansas resident Jessica Kivell.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Associated Press: There’s one issue where Republicans and Democrats are unified before the midterms, a new poll finds. “The survey data say about half, 53%, of Americans are ‘extremely’ or ‘very’ concerned about artificial intelligence’s environmental impacts. That is up from 41% last year. Democrats are driving much of the increase in environmental concern, but the poll also reveals broader worries about the local impact of data centers, which power AI and cloud computing.”

The Register: Scientific papers become agentic chatbots with new tool. “Paper2Agent, the team’s new framework described in a paper published in Nature on Wednesday, converts scientific papers and their associated research outputs into agents that can discuss a paper’s findings, reproduce analyses and results, apply its methods to new data, and even collaborate with other paper agents on new research problems.” 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.

Retail Insider: TryCanadian.ca Launches as Consumers Search for Canadian Alternatives to U.S. Brands. “Founder Tomas Svec spent roughly three to four weeks developing the platform ahead of its launch, with much of that time devoted to researching and building a database that now includes more than 900 companies and is approaching 1,000. The challenge, he said, was not simply finding Canadian businesses, but determining what being Canadian actually means.”

Augustana College: Augustana helps build searchable digital archive of Swedish-American newspapers. “Swedish American Newspapers Project…puts more than a million pages of their history at readers’ fingertips. This free resource includes 348 publications whose pages were digitized thanks to the efforts of partners in the two countries, including the Minnesota Historical Society, Kungliga biblioteket (National Library of Sweden), the American Swedish Institute, and Augustana College’s Swenson Swedish American Research Center.”

NHK World Japan: Archive preserves legacy of New York’s Japanese immigrants. “New York is home to one of the largest Japanese American communities in the United States, a legacy built by the Issei, the first generation of immigrants from Japan. A new digital archive of decades-old portraits is shedding light on their lives, preserving stories that might otherwise have been lost to history. NHK World’s Inoue Yuki reports on how faces from the past offer stories for the future.”

AROUND THE SEARCH & SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

BBC: Learner drivers turn to YouTube and TikTok to cut costs – but instructors warn of risks. “Driving lessons in the UK are now about £35 to £50, according to the RAC, with the average learner needing 45 hours of lessons and a further 22 hours of practice. Megan Kielthy, who passed her driving test in August, said social media videos ‘definitely’ saved her money, but she also had seen AI-generated images and misinformation that she had warned could confuse learners.”

MacRumor: Apple’s Weirdest iTunes Walk-Back Turns 12 Today. “12 years ago today, Apple published a web page with one job: to make a U2 album go away. On September 9, 2014, at Apple’s iPhone 6 event, Tim Cook revealed that ‘Songs of Innocence’ would be given to every iTunes customer for nothing.”

Andrew Stephens: Estimania is a Great Daily Game (plus a rant about the NYT Games App). “I am writing this post because I think Estimania is a great game that more people should play. Each day you get five deceptively simple trivia questions – you are not expected to get the answer exactly, you are scored on how close your quick, back-of-the envelope estimate is.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Cal Matters: Data brokers have detailed files on you. Here’s what’s in them — and how it impacts you. “In several states, new privacy laws are forcing brokers to disclose the companies that bought your data. So we asked for volunteers to request their personal data reports from the world’s largest data brokers. Hundreds of people responded.”

The Record: International Meteor Organization says cyberattack dealt ‘critical blow’ to website. “A cyberattack has shut down the website of the premier international organization responsible for tracking meteors. The International Meteor Organization (IMO) has continued tracking asteroids and meteor through its Facebook page, but its website now carries a static page notifying visitors of the cyberattack.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

University of Michigan: Neighborhood by neighborhood: Mapping what shapes healthy aging. “The National Neighborhood Data Archive, or NaNDA, housed at U-M’s Institute for Social Research, will expand its collection by about 30%. It links access to parks, healthy food stores, health care and other community resources with lower risks of hospitalization, chronic disease and disability among older adults. The archive currently offers more than 250 free public datasets that users have downloaded 125,000 times and cited in more than 270 publications.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Hackaday: Introducing The Periodic Table Of US Electrical Receptacles. “Although things may seem simple on the North American grid as an end-user if you limit yourself to just 120 VAC and NEMA 1-15 and 5-15 connectors, there is a veritable zoo of different voltages and receptacles out there in the NEMA connector catalogue. Recently [Practical Engineering] decided to not only take a look at how many of these defined standards are actually used, but also put them in a nice periodic table style graphic.” 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.

The Art Newspaper: Celebrated Italian church featuring art by Giotto and Cimabue preserved through new digital reconstruction project. “Heritage lovers around the world can now explore a digital reconstruction of the Basilica of St Francis of Assisi, one of central Italy’s best-known churches, and its rich decoration by artists including Cimabue, Giotto and Pietro Lorenzetti.”

American Ancestors: New Database—United States: World War I Draft Registration Cards, 1917-1918. “We are excited to announce a new database has been added to American Ancestors, World War I Draft Registration Cards, 1917-1918! This database contains 25,581,987 records and names documenting men who registered for the draft during the years surrounding World War I. These records were originally created by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) and shared with American Ancestors through FamilySearch.” I was able to search these and view images without registering or logging in.

TechCrunch: UN turns to Google to make its global data ready for AI agents. “Called the UN System Data Commons, the new system is built on Google’s open source Data Commons platform and lets people search for statistics from across UN agencies using natural-language queries. It replaces the existing UNData portal, where users largely had to browse and search for statistics through a more traditional database interface.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Digital Public Library of America: Cleveland Public Library Takes the Helm of The National Digital Collection. “We’re excited to share that Cleveland Public Library (CPL) now maintains the digital collection of American cultural heritage. This vital program brings together over 50 million books, photos, maps, videos and more, contributed by more than 6,000 libraries, archives, and museums from across the country, making them discoverable in a single search portal. As we announced earlier this year, CPL now manages the program’s technical infrastructure and administration. Users continue to have free access to the collection at dp.la.”

Search Engine Journal: Google Search Profiles Now Available At 10,000 Followers. “Google is lowering the follower threshold for Search profiles to 10,000. Media companies also get one login for several brands, and articles on a profile get a new look.”

AROUND THE SEARCH & SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

New York Times: Cat Frazier, Whose Retro GIFs Celebrated a Weirder Internet, Dies at 35. “Ms. Frazier’s retro-maximalist aesthetic did not exactly represent nostalgia. But her embrace of an earlier, rawer and arguably more fun era of the internet reflected a growing backlash against the corporatization of online life, as the once-wild communities of GeoCities gave way to the blandness of Facebook groups and Twitter threads.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Courthouse News Service: Vonnegut heirs can proceed with challenge to Utah book removal law. “A federal judge allowed the heirs of Kurt Vonnegut to proceed Tuesday with their First Amendment challenge to a Utah law that calls for the removal of books with ‘sensitive’ material from the state’s public schools.”

The Register: Low-quality casino sites conceal highly dangerous threat actors. “If your employees are visiting Chinese-language gambling or adult sites, they may not just be wasting time and money, but potentially encountering serious malware hidden behind domains that look like mostly harmless entertainment at first glance.”

DPA: German court holds Meta liable for fake ads on Facebook, Instagram. “US tech giant Meta is liable for fake advertising on its social media platforms Instagram and Facebook, a German court ruled on Thursday. The Frankfurt regional court was asked to rule on a case concerning advertisements using the logo of financial advice website Finanzfluss, alongside photos of the website’s founder, to promote fraudulent investment schemes.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Illinois Answers Project: How we built a database of Illinois jail records — and how you can use it to do your own digging. “More than four years in the making. Over 65,000 pages of government documents. Nearly a thousand records requests and over a hundred interviews. This is what it took to create the largest and most comprehensive database of conditions inside Illinois county jails.”

The Conversation: Peptides are spreading on social media. Here’s how platforms can better protect public health. “Peptide-related content is spreading fast on social media. Which raises an important question: when a platform’s algorithm is actively promoting sellers, influencers and products to millions of people, how much responsibility does that platform carry for what happens next?”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

City Limits: NYCHA’s ‘Furniture Queen’ Rehomed Nearly 500,000 Pounds of Thrifted Finds Without a Warehouse. She Just Won $200K.. “[Regina] Carter, now recognized by her neighbors as the “Furniture Queen,” runs Repurposed Life, a nonprofit that works with thrift stores, moving companies, and an extensive word-of-mouth system to collect home goods like desks, chairs, sofas, computers and televisions. She then hosts free pop-ups where anyone can claim the items—otherwise destined for landfills, and often in excellent condition—to New Yorkers in need on a first-come, first-serve basis.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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

Spotted on LinkedIn, created by the brilliant Kay Savetz: Newsbytes Archive. “Search the technology reporting of Newsbytes News Network, documenting the formative years of personal computing, online services, telecommunications, and the Internet from 1983 to 2002.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Internet Archive Blog: An Update on Wayback Machine Access. “Here’s what’s going on. The Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine has been hit by waves of high-volume automated traffic, and we’ve put protections in place to keep the service running. One recent change: we rewrote the message you see when a request is blocked with a 429 error — the HTTP code that means ‘too many requests.’ Those protections sometimes catch real people by mistake.”

Reuters: Google should relax ad tech rules, appoint antitrust monitor, US judge finds. “A federal judge said Google should relax its rules governing its ‌online advertising auctions and appoint an internal antitrust compliance monitor, while stopping short of demanding that the Alphabet unit break up its advertising technology monopoly.”

USEFUL STUFF

How-To Geek: Why a used $25 Kindle beats any Raspberry Pi display you can buy today. “If you need a display for a Raspberry Pi project, the obvious solution is to buy a dedicated accessory specifically designed to work with your single-board computer. For many projects, however, a used $25 Kindle can actually be a better choice.” Great article.

AROUND THE SEARCH & SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

The Press (New Zealand): Google Maps’ misleading nine-hour detour spells plummeting bookings for West Coast businesses. “Tourism operators in South Westland say misleading information on Google Maps that advises people to take a nine-hour detour is costing them business – with one seeing customer numbers down 40% on last year. Visitors are cancelling bookings because the mapping app is treating a restricted section of State Highway 6 as completely impassable.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Ars Technica: Online hate researcher keeps hammering X despite deportation threat. “The US is not backing down from its fight to deport noncitizen technology researchers who monitor safety risks on the biggest online platforms.”

The Register: HBO Max Reddit account compromised to serve ClickFix attacks. “Someone compromised the official HBO Max Reddit account and used it to push more than 100 malicious ads serving up ClickFix attacks targeting both Windows and macOS devices with information-stealing malware.”

Associated Press: EU chief proposes bloc-wide social media ban for kids under 13. “The European Union’s top official proposed on Wednesday banning children under 13 across the 27-nation bloc from using social media sites and imposing limits for older teens on accessing the platforms.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

ANSTO: Snail shell can act a natural archive of weather and landscape changes. “ANSTO has undertaken radiocarbon dating of a snail shell in research led by the University of Queensland, who were investigating if the environmental proxy could provide information about past climate and environmental conditions in Southeast Queensland.”

BBC: Why museum’s last mummy has been taken off display. “The mummified body of an ancient Egyptian woman has been removed from a museum exhibition after more than 200 years on display as part of efforts to respect “the wishes of the dead”, curators have said.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Spoon & Tamago: Tadao Ando Designed & Donated a Floating Library that Delivers Books to Children. “Cutting through the white-capped waves of the Seto Inland Sea is a one-of-kind ‘floating library’. This is Hon no Mori-go (ほんのもり号) created to give children living on remote islands the opportunity to discover books and nurture their creativity. Inside the ship are shelves lined with 2000 books including picture books, fairytales and illustrated guidebooks for young readers.” 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.

The Guardian: ‘Tidal wave’ of Pfas being launched to satisfy AI industry, campaigners warn. “Pfas companies are launching a ‘tidal wave’ of forever chemicals production to meet demand from the AI industry, a campaign organisation has warned. Despite alarm over the chemicals, which have been linked to cancer, a survey of the 10 biggest manufacturers found most had plans to increase production.”

Futurism: How Three Brothers Built an AI Slop Empire by Buying Legitimate News Sites and Turning Them Into Zombie Content Farms That They Say Get 50 Million Page Views per Month. “Brown Brothers Media is the biggest media company you’ve never heard of — powered by AI, fake writers, and plagiarism. When we started asking questions, it started deleting massive amounts of content.”

AI TRAINING

Gizmodo: Elon Musk Reportedly Seeking Customer Data From Dead Startups to Train AI. “AI needs data to train, and data costs a good penny. Seems like all the user data on X and all the data SpaceX has ever produced hasn’t been enough for Elon Musk’s Grok, because he has a new solution to the conundrum: buying customer data from defunct companies for cheap.”

AI IN EDUCATION

New York Times: In the Age of A.I., Some in China Wonder if Learning English Is Worth the Trouble. “As A.I. translation tools improve and young people face uncertain post-grad prospects, the post from the teacher, Tang Jiafeng, set off a debate online that resurfaces every few years: Should schools cut back on mandatory English class time? Since the late 1970s, China has embraced teaching English, which is one of three core subjects along with math and Chinese, as crucial to its efforts to open up to the rest of the world. It takes up significant classroom time and counts heavily toward scores on the gaokao, the Chinese college entrance exam.”

AI IN GOVERNANCE

Washington Sun: Inside Trump’s Aggressive Push to Build Data Centers on Public Lands. “The Bureau of Land Management has asked its state directors to identify public land ripe for data center development, according to two people familiar with the request, and those leaders have compiled lists for Interior Department leadership.”

Mother Jones: Killer AI Is Already Here. We’re Using It in Iran.. “The US-Israel war on Iran is not only the least popular war the United States has ever waged, but also represents an unprecedented application of AI in warfare. New data from the Institute for Global Affairs and YouGov shows that the present weaponization of AI has flown under the radar, with most Americans largely unaware of our own military’s AI use.”

AI LEGISLATION

CNBC: House to vote on bill to rein in AI data center utility costs. “The House could vote as early as Tuesday night on a bill that aims to curb data center-related utility bill rate hikes, as backlash to the proliferating facilities grows ahead of the 2026 midterm election.”

AI IN WORK

Variety: Interview With Tilly Norwood Reveals Even Fewer Reasons For the Existence of the AI ‘Actress’. “Let’s set aside the risk of AI’s extinction-level capabilities. Even an extended chat with Tilly Norwood, the AI ‘actress’ many see as Hollywood’s villain, left me a little more unnerved about the technology’s implications.”

AROUND THE AI WORLD

Creative Bloq: Wait, people are even using AI flyers to advertise art classes?. “Over on X, people have been flagging up poster designs for traditional art classes and graphic design courses that use what appear to be AI-generated illustrations and graphics. Some of the flyers are from social media posts, while some of them were spotted out in the wild as on-street advertising. But would anyone be prepared to take drawing and painting lessons from a teacher who resorts to AI art?”

Stereogum: Meta Kicks Muse Off Their Social Handles To Launch New AI Agent. “At this point, I would guess that Muse the band are still way more famous than Muse the AI agent, but that didn’t stop Meta from taking the band Muse’s social media handles away from them. Now, they must deal with the humiliation of becoming @Museband on both Instagram and Facebook.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Reuters: US accuses Chinese AI firms of ‘malicious’ copying of AI technology. “The U.S. government on Tuesday accused Chinese artificial intelligence companies of maliciously copying technology from American AI firms, potentially complicating relations ​ahead of a planned meeting between leaders of the world’s two biggest economies later this month.”

Music Business Worldwide: Universal Music Group sues DistroKid, accusing it of ‘unlawful practices’ and ‘flooding platforms with AI-generated slop’. “Universal Music Group is suing the world’s biggest music distributor by volume, DistroKid. In its lawsuit, UMG, the world’s largest music rights company, alleges that DistroKid has ‘engaged in both deceptive trade practices and blatant copyright infringement’.”

Kyiv Post: Russian Forces Use Artificial Intelligence to Show Artificial Victory. “Russian sources are increasingly using AI-generated and AI-altered videos to falsely portray Russian forces as capturing Ukrainian territory they do not control, according to the Institute for the Study of War (ISW).”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Hackaday: Can AI Now Design PCBs That Just Work?. “With the recent release of its GPT-6 Astra model, OpenAI explicitly pushed the claim that it is capable of designing complete circuit boards in KiCad, starting from a provided schematic and outputting a fully routed PCB that theoretically could be sent off to be manufactured. This of course raises the question whether this is just a nifty party trick that works under strictly controlled conditions like most auto-routing tools, or whether there’s more to it. In a recent [EEBench] blog post, OpenAI’s claims are put to the test.”

PsyPost: Study reveals a double standard in how we view AI-assisted communication. “People expected others to use AI-assisted communication tools more often than they would use them themselves, according to a study published in the British Journal of Psychology. The research also discovered that people viewed openly disclosed AI use more favorably than secret use when the two options were directly compared.” 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.

Mashable: Windows 11 emergency update: Microsoft races to fix bugs. “Microsoft’s big September 2026 Patch Tuesday update addressed a record 966 flaws, including two actively exploited zero-day vulnerabilities, across Microsoft products when it was released last week on Sept. 8. However, just one week later on Sept. 14, Microsoft rolled out an emergency, out-of-band patch for the patch.”

USEFUL STUFF

MakeUseOf: This free open-source tool is my new favorite way to capture notes. “After years of jumping between bloated platforms that promised to ‘revolutionize’ how I organize my thoughts, I stumbled upon something completely different. Memos is an open-source note-taking app that does exactly one thing really well: it lets you capture thoughts instantly without any friction. I discovered this lightweight tool while searching for an alternative to subscription-heavy apps that continually added features I never requested.”

AROUND THE SEARCH & SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

New York Times: Can a Broadcast Personality Become a Livestreaming Star?. “For six hours, Kornacki’s every move was streamed in real time on YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and the NBC News website. He gulped water. He pounded numbers into a calculator app on his phone. He rattled off the population of Wichita, Kan. (400,000), and the number of counties in Michigan (83).”

Maps Mania: GeoGuessr Gets an Antipodean Time Machine. “Continuing my quest to catalog every GeoGuessr spinoff in existence, today’s menu features two fresh location-guessing challenges: TimePin and Oppocity.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

CBS 12: Florida driver database hacked through compromised police credentials, state says. “Florida’s Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles says an international cybercriminal organization breached a state driver-record database after gaining access through compromised credentials belonging to a Plant City Police Department user.”

Politico: DOJ seeking reporter’s LinkedIn records in secretive First Amendment court fight. “A secret, months-long battle between tech titans and the Justice Department — over prosecutors’ effort to obtain details on a journalist’s LinkedIn interactions for use in a national security leak probe — spilled into view Tuesday during a federal court argument in Virginia.”

Courthouse News: California museum sued over Renaissance painting looted by Nazis. “The Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, California, faces a new lawsuit to recover a pair of life-size Renaissance paintings confiscated by the Nazis when the Jewish owners had to flee the Netherlands in 1940.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Pew (PEW PEW PEW PEW PEW!): How Americans think about censorship of news in the U.S.. “As it pertains to news, concerns about suppression of information go beyond any single institution: Substantial shares of U.S. adults believe government actors as well as media and technology companies intentionally keep important news from reaching the public.”

ARTnews: Joan Mitchell Foundation Publishes Extensive Report on Artist Legacy Stewardship. “What does it take to preserve an artist’s legacy? ‘You can only learn how to do this by doing it,’ Solana Chehtman, director of artist programs at the Joan Mitchell Foundation, offered in response to a question that animates an ambitious new report titled Creating Future Memory: Building the Field of Artist Legacy Stewardship, published by the Mitchell Foundation.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Ars Technica: A new solar cell could generate electricity underwater. “Moisture is particularly destructive to perovskites, making them a seemingly odd choice for an underwater solar panel. But these materials have another critical superpower: They can be tuned to work with different wavelengths of light. Water quickly blocks the wavelengths of light that silicon solar panels absorb, but a carefully designed perovskite cell could still make electricity in the deep blue sea. And actually, the lower light levels and cooler temperatures should help it live longer.” 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.