Hell Gate NYC: Comparing New York’s Most Powerful Judges’ Records Has Never Been Possible—Until Now. “The platform, called Decoded, is the newest project from Oded Oren, who in 2023 left his job as a public defender to start Scrutinize, a website dedicated to increasing judicial transparency. (Hell Gate used Scrutinize as a research tool for our project Courts of Contempt, a deep dive into how judges become judges in New York, and the consequences the broken system can have for everyday New Yorkers.) Decoded uses AI to scrape and organize the judges’ decisions, a platform Oren launched Wednesday after a year of intense development and trial and error.”

DigitalNC: EXTRA, EXTRA! DigitalNC Sets New Record of 5 MILLION Newspaper Pages with Addition of Blue Ridge Sun. “We are elated to have the entire run of The Blue Ridge Sun (Sparta, N.C.) join our newspaper collection for many reasons, such as its geographic location, time period coverage, and that it was established, published, and edited by a woman.”

DeepSeek now has a Search API and a Fetch API.. It costs 75 cents per thousand requests. 75 cents is within my budget so I’ll think I’ll be doodling around with this one a bit.

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Search Engine Roundtable: Bing Tests Related Searches Based On Your Browsing. “Bing is testing showing ‘Related searches based on your browsing’ similar to how Google is/was showing this a few months ago. In Bing’s test, this is below the Microsoft Ads in the search results.”

AROUND THE SEARCH & SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Eurogamer: In the age of AI, one man spent years squeezing an entire museum onto a Game Boy – Why? For the most human of reasons. “‘Let me be honest from the start: nobody was waiting for this. The world has many needs, and a Game Boy cartridge with no game inside it was not high on the list.’ So begins Dr Marcel Pflug’s explanation for one of the most unexpected projects I’ve come across in a while: a Game Boy reference museum that isn’t just a Game Boy reference museum; it’s one that works on a Game Boy cartridge.”

MakeUseOf: Google has officially turned these Nest thermostats back into dumb thermostats. “…the first- and second-generation Nest Learning Thermostats were officially dropped by Google last year. Nest Learning Thermostats hook up to your home’s electrical wiring, so there’s no battery to worry about. But key Nest Learning Thermostat features depend on Google services to work…. If you own one of the affected models, you might be happy to learn that a free and open-source software project restores your Nest Learning Thermostat’s cloud functionality once again.”

National Comedy Center: National Comedy Center Preserves Hundreds of Rare, Never-Before-Seen “I Love Lucy” Behind-the-Scenes Photographs and Early Pilot Script for 75th Anniversary. “On the 75th anniversary of I Love Lucy’s historic October 15, 1951 premiere, the National Comedy Center today announced the acquisition of one of the most significant collections of original I Love Lucy production material to emerge in decades – including hundreds of rare, previously unseen behind-the-scenes photographs, Lucy and Desi’s personally owned 35mm film prints of the series, and a rare original script draft representing the earliest known revisions to the formative I Love Lucy pilot episode.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Engadget: NY congressman to introduce bill protecting video game ownership . “Representative Ritchie Torres (D-NY) has announced plans to introduce a bill calling on the Federal Trade Commission to protect people’s ability to own and play the video games they’ve purchased.”

Florida Phoenix: In the dark? 2026 ‘Government in the Sunshine’ manual seemingly shelved. “Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier has not published the Government in the Sunshine Manual this year, seemingly breaking an annual effort by attorneys general in the state for decades. The book is typically published in partnership with the Florida First Amendment Foundation and explains Florida’s public records and public meeting laws plus any changes made via case law or the Legislature since the last edition.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Low Poly Brainblast: Hosting an ‘Internet Search Party’. “I recently hosted an in-person ‘Internet Search Party’ (and single release) here in Boston. The purpose and position of the party was exactly what it sounds like — we literally surfed the web. ‘…But why?’, you ask yourself. Read on for more.” As you might imagine I LOVE this.

XDA Developers: I de-Googled my life for a week, and this is the local setup that replaced search, photos, and documents. “I wanted to see how much of my digital life could actually survive without Google in the event I wanted to ditch it for good. Email was a no-go at this moment since I couldn’t change my contact details with every organization I’m registered with. But the rest was pretty much free game. I already made my own little calendar tool with Claude, so this wasn’t an area I needed help with. But Photos, Search, and Docs were the big ones, and turns out, there are loads more private options.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Salt Lake Tribune: Author Jodi Picoult came to Utah with a surprise: 600 free copies of her bestselling novel banned from public schools. “Jodi Picoult’s novel ‘Nineteen Minutes’ was banned from all Utah public schools this year — and all copies were destroyed, which state law requires districts to do. But during a Saturday evening talk at Salt Lake City’s West High School, Picoult surprised attendees by giving away 600 free copies of the banned book.” 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.

Found in my RSS feeds: The RSS Universe. “No algorithm, no timeline, no engagement bait. Just feeds you chose. Here’s the whole ecosystem — readers, feed generators, monitoring, directories, and the standards that hold it together.” RSSGizmos.com not included — now I have to figure out how to suggest a site via a GitHub PR….

Sustainable Packaging News: Carton Council Launches Image Database to Support AI-Powered Carton Sorting. “The Carton Council, an association dedicated to improving the recovery and recycling of food and beverage cartons, has launched a new initiative to help artificial intelligence-powered sorting systems more reliably identify cartons moving through material recovery facilities (MRFs). The association has created a pilot library of photographs showing cartons as they actually appear in the recycling stream – partially folded, torn, discolored, or otherwise altered through collection, compaction, transportation, and processing.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

MinistryWatch: MinistryWatch 1000 Database Tops 1,800 Ministries — and Counting Plus, other notable ministry happenings from this week.. “Here at MinistryWatch, one of our goals is to equip donors with the information they need to make wise decisions with their giving. That’s why we manage our database, which rates more than 1,000 of the country’s largest ministries based on their financial efficiency, financial transparency, and their donor confidence.”

Engadget: Opera’s lightweight Air browser is back, unbothered, moisturized, in its lane . “Opera has relaunched its very mindful Air browser with a host of new anti-distraction features. The audiovisual makeover is designed to help you focus better on what you’re actually supposed to be doing, rather than encouraging you to wander into yet another free time-draining Reddit rabbit hole.”

AROUND THE SEARCH & SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

FedScoop: Meet the former U.S. data chief taking the ‘Lorax’ approach to disappearing federal data. “Much like Dr. Seuss’s children’s book character the Lorax, who ‘speaks for the trees’ amid deforestation, [Denice] Ross aims to speak for federal data through her leadership of the Federation of American Scientists’ budding Data Policy Institute. The analogy is silly, she admits, but her meaning is clear: Federal data might not be as accessible as other issues and stands to benefit from an advocate.”

The Register: TinyLittleOffice, where the link is the document. “TinyLittleOffice comprises a selection of tools, including a basic word processor, presentation builder, spreadsheet, calendar, and a drawing tool. The theory is a simple one: create a document and get a link. The link is the document.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Okay, this is a weird link but hear me out. The link is to PACER: PACER Quarterly Announcements | October 2026. That link leads to a PDF which downloads automatically when you click on it, and that is what I am quoting. “On January 1, 2027, a modest temporary increase in fees for electronic access to court records will take effect to help reimburse the costs of the development of the new case management and public access system. The increase of two cents per page, from 10 cents to 12 cents, was approved by the Executive Committee on behalf of the Judicial Conference. In addition, the automatic exemption for PACER fees will be raised from $30 to $40 per quarter, ensuring that most individual users (those who use $40 or less in PACER services per quarter) will continue to incur no fee or fee increase. ”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Rocketry Research Journal: The Revival of the Flight Logs Database?. “Given the use of AI in the Linux kernel, I decided to see what would happen if we tried to use AI to bring back Flight Logs. We asked Grok if Flight Logs could be updated to modern standards and the response was an unequivocal ‘No’ and it proceeded to explain that what killed the project to begin with hadn’t changed, and there are no routes using even the current version of Access that will change that. But then it said something unexpected. That there is a way to bring back Flight Logs, but it would need to start from scratch.”

BBC: Our business ads were taken down for saying ‘pregnancy’ on Instagram. “When Irene Breen got a notification in January 2025 that Instagram was removing adverts for her company’s pregnancy pillows, she was confused. What was so offensive about a pillow? She was later told on a call with Meta that the problem was the word ‘pregnancy’.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Block Club Chicago: Chicago Sewing Museum Opens In Avondale With 100 Sewing Machines Through The Ages. “The quirky museum has 100 sewing machines dating back to the 1800s sourced from collectors, donations, online shops and garage sales, plus historical needles and irons, threads, buttons and more. Helmed by Katie Esslinger, who has sewn clothes since she was a kid and made her own wedding dress, the community museum seeks to be a place to learn, make and celebrate historical sewing and tailors.” 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.

Reddit: Frans Masereel’s Public Domain Artwork, 1918–1930: A digitized collection of 1,800 woodcuts from approximately 70 books. “Frans Masereel (1889-1972) was a Belgian artist renowned for his expressive woodcuts and wordless visual narratives, being a solid inspiration for Lynd Ward, Eric Drooker, and Clifford Harper. I spent a few years gathering about 70 books with woodcut illustrations by him, and I was aiming for books that were in the public domain or soon entering it. Then I scanned, cleaned, rebalanced, and uploaded them to archive.org.”

Illinois State University: Barnum and Bailey souvenir programs join Milner Library’s online research collections. “Earlier this year Milner Library’s Digitization Center added 54 Barnum and Bailey Circus souvenir programs dating from 1874 to 1918 to the library’s digital collections. Clocking in at over 2000 pages, this database will allow circus history researchers, and all those interested in turn-of-the-century American popular culture, to explore the entertainment offerings of the country’s premier circus.”

Found in my Snaps: MoroccoAPI. From the GitHub page: “MoroccoAPI is a community-driven, open-source project that turns reusable Moroccan public datasets into consistent, documented, and versioned APIs. Public information is often distributed across spreadsheets, documents, portals, and incompatible schemas. MoroccoAPI aims to make approved open datasets easier to discover and use while preserving source attribution, licensing, provenance, and update history.” Available in English, French, and Arabic.

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Denver Post: Meta updates data scraping policy following criticism. “Meta announced Friday evening that it had made ‘clarifications’ regarding its new updated terms of service for its business and commercial products, which some legal and media experts had previously decried as being too unfair to content creators.”

Mashable, and I promise you I did not intentionally put these stories together: Meta confirms smart glasses were recording without being activated. “According to numerous reports from users, Meta’s smart glasses have been making audio recordings of their conversations without the user’s permission. Meta has since confirmed the issue and have said it’s been fixed.”

AROUND THE SEARCH & SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

The Hindu: Nine escape unhurt as car plunges into 10-foot gorge in forest area in Erode. “On October 15, they were travelling by car, following directions displayed on Google Maps. The application directed them along a forest road via Kottadai village, towards Dhimbam. Unaware that they were on an unsuitable route, the group continued until the car became stuck on a dirt track. When they attempted to turn around and retrace their route, the vehicle skidded down a slope and plunged into the gorge, reportedly in a farmland.”

Utah Historical Society: Introducing our newest oral history grants cohort. “Through support from Utah Humanities and the Utah Historical Society, the oral history grant provides funding to collect and transcribe interviews and share the content with local communities through public programming. This quarter, the organizations awarded funding to six state history projects.”

Cal Matters: Gavin Newsom’s 24/7 social media machine . “These days you can find Gov. Gavin Newsom on just about any media platform. With less than three months until he finishes his final term as California governor, you can catch Newsom on X picking fights with right-wing media, posting on Substack and interviewing guests on his podcast.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Block Club Chicago: Delivery Robots Accused Of Scanning Customers’ Faces, Sharing Biometric Data. “The battle over Chicago’s food delivery robots has reached the courts, with two customers accusing the companies behind them of collecting their biometric data without consent. The men filed separate class-action lawsuits in Cook County court Oct. 9 against Coco Robotics and Serve Robotics, alleging the companies violated a state privacy law. They claim the companies’ machines scanned their faces and hands without their knowledge or consent.”

Ars Technica: Targeted ads delivered 0-click exploits to install mercenary malware. “Researchers say that mercenary hackers laced ads with zero-click exploits that installed sophisticated malware on the devices of targeted individuals when they did nothing other than load a website or open an installed app.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Discover Magazine: Drones Help Find Three Aboriginal Rock Shelters With Red Hand Stencils. “After drones flagged possible rock shelters in Australia’s Blue Mountains, archaeologist Amy Mosig Way led students and volunteers into the bush to check the locations on foot. Inside, stone artifacts and red hand stencils preserved evidence of past Aboriginal life, connecting the places they were recording with the people who had used them generations before.”

Hands Off Our Census: Census Data: A Public Good Under Threat. “Most people don’t think much about the information that the federal government collects through the U.S. Census until it disappears. But when we lose census data, we lose irreplaceable, objective information that anyone can access and use, for free. And that equality of access is fundamental to the research community.” 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.

Italian Botanist: Digitization of the historical Herbarium of Giovanni Giannini at Pisa (PI-GIANN). “The herbarium digitization aligns with global efforts to modernise natural collection data and facilitate broad reuse. In this framework, the Herbarium of Giovanni Giannini (1793–1871) conserved in the Herbarium of the University of Pisa (international code PI) was digitized. The Herbarium is composed by 25 packages of plants, algae, fungi, and lichens. Metadata were entered into the online database Virtual Herbaria JACQ and mirrored into a personalized virtual Herbarium of the Botanic Museum.”

FinanceWire: ShrooMap Expands Mushroom Database to 1,022 Products and Adds Lab-Evidence Tracking (PRESS RELEASE). “ShrooMap, a mushroom product research and comparison platform operated by Real Tested Inc., has expanded its database to 1,022 mushroom products, alongside a growing evidence-tracking system designed to help consumers distinguish documented product information from marketing claims.” This is more about psychedelia than cooking food.

Geeks Are Sexy: Play 200+ Games in Your Browser, Zero Installs Required. “It’s 2 PM on a Tuesday. Your inbox is a war zone, that spreadsheet isn’t filling itself, and your brain checked out an hour ago. What you need is a game. What you don’t need is a 40GB download and an installer begging for admin rights. Say hello to Ported2Browser: a directory of 200+ games and apps that run entirely in your browser. Click, play, and kiss your free time goodbye.”

State of Maryland: Governor Moore Announces Job Training Search Tool to Connect Marylanders with Opportunities and Safeguard Access to Benefits Amid Trump Administration Restrictions. “Governor Wes Moore today announced the launch of a new search tool designed to rapidly connect Marylanders with more than 900 job training programs, adult education opportunities, career schools and pathways, and workforce development programs.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Gizmodo: The MapQuest Renaissance Continues as the Platform Adds Flock Camera Locations. “MapQuest is continuing its push to become the official map and navigation platform of the resistance. After promising not to comply with the Trump administration’s ‘Lake America’ gimmick, the platform announced a new ‘Surveillance Layer’ that displays the locations of automated license plate readers (ALPRs), including those from Flock Safety.”

USEFUL STUFF

How-To Geek: Tired of VLC? These 5 free media players are worth a look. “If you’re looking for something beyond VLC, these five alternatives are worth a try. All of them are free, open-source, cross-platform, and actively maintained. And even if you try them all and end up going back to VLC out of habit, that’s perfectly fine. You might just discover a player that suits you better.”

MakeUseOf: I finally found a better way to save things from the internet. “I’ve accumulated hundreds of bookmarks over the years, but I rarely revisit them, even if I remember they exist. What I really wanted was a proper read-it-later library where everything I want to keep is presented in an attractive UI, properly categorized, and with recognizable thumbnails. I didn’t want another subscription, so I installed the free, open-source Wallabag myself in Docker. Then I started filling it with my own MakeUseOf articles to test it, and I quickly realized I’d been thinking about bookmarks all wrong.”

AROUND THE SEARCH & SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Letitia James: Attorney General James Warns New Yorkers About AI-Generated Election Misinformation Ahead of November Elections. “New York Attorney General Letitia James today released an updated guide to help New Yorkers spot, avoid, and report election misinformation created by artificial intelligence (AI) ahead of the November 3 general elections.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Michigan Daily: The history we collect . “Beatriz González, a Colombian painter and sculptor, once said, “Art says things that history cannot.” I would argue that, in some capacity, the personal narratives we create through archives like these are also a sort of art…. Our memories, our receipts, our stickers, our ticket stubs from a play we might have seen with our friends — these all create a necessary interjection, a disruption. The act itself might seem fairly simple, but collecting has the power to inspire memories of our unique existence, to revive our personhood.”

The Conversation: Sexual violence concepts launched online are spilling into the real world – harming women and young men and overwhelming counselors. “Some countries are taking initiative to curb sexually violent content online. For instance, the U.K. in 2026 implemented several guidelines for social media companies to reduce the spread of misogynistic and sexually violent content to young men and boys. But U.S. federal and state legislation is not keeping up. As social scientists in social work and psychology, we study the ways sexual violence and masculinities intersect with digital technologies. The growth and cultural salience of manosphere communities have made them increasingly relevant to the work we do.” 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.

Racket MN: Ex-NYC Mayor Eric Adams Promised to Pitch a Wisconsin Data Center With ‘Rigor.’ His Failure Was Spectacular.. “Even for a born pitchman like Eric Adams, a data center was always going to be a tough sell. So when video surfaced of the former New York City mayor being mercilessly heckled by angry residents in a central Wisconsin library as he tried to convince them of the benefits of building a 150-megawatt data center at the site of an old paper mill, the record-scratch, freeze-frame questions asked themselves. How did Adams spend his time in Wisconsin? What was his plan to make this work? And who, exactly, thought this was a good idea?”

Searchlight New Mexico: Oracle touts Project Jupiter benefits during tour as wrangling over power continues. “… even as the data center buildings near completion, they remain without power. A proposed natural gas fuel cell plant to power the sprawling complex still lacks a state air quality permit. The state also has delayed a natural gas pipeline to supply the fuel, first rejecting a proposal to build the pipeline on state trust land and then calling for a new federal review that includes the environmental impacts.”

AI IN EDUCATION

Mashable: Teachers are reaching their breaking point in the ChatGPT classroom. “Teachers have a lot to get off their chests. Helping a classroom full of students learn to read, write, and work on their own is already a big job. Add chatbots that can do the homework — or create the lesson it’s based on — and there’s even more to work through. Some are taking those frustrations to TikTok and Reddit, and finding plenty of people to commiserate with.”

AI IN FINANCE

New York Times: Weak Links Start to Show in A.I. Borrowing. “Trillions of dollars in borrowed money have powered the A.I. boom. But now there is growing uncertainty around just how easily more money can be obtained — and how much of it will be paid back. Those questions burst into the forefront this week when investors rapidly lost confidence in one debt-laden data center company, CoreWeave. Prices of its bonds — the company has accrued $72 billion in liabilities to operate 51 data centers — crashed, and investors placed a more than 60 percent likelihood CoreWeave would fail to meet its obligations.”

Nebraska Examiner: Data centers are now the largest financial bet in US history. “Railroads in the 19th century consumed about $173 billion in today’s dollars and created more than 2% of the nation’s annual economic output (GDP) over 20 years. Today’s data center buildout will dwarf that amount, with $10 trillion in investment, and now have almost twice the economic impact — nearly 4% of GDP. That’s according to a report created by a Columbia Business School professor, Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh.”

AI IN GOVERNANCE

Reuters: Lawmakers ask FAA to pause use of new AI tool in DC-area flight management. “More than two dozen lawmakers asked the Federal Aviation ‌Administration to pause the use of a new AI tool in the Washington area to assist air traffic controllers, citing safety concerns.”

The Hill: Blackburn on AI Kendrick Lamar clip backlash: It wasn’t ‘intended to offend’. “Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) is defending herself after coming under fire for sharing a video, which seemed to be AI-generated, in which she appeared in the place of rapper Kendrick Lamar during his 2025 Super Bowl LIX Halftime Show performance.”

AI IN WORK

CNBC: Some companies give AI to everyone. This CEO is doing the opposite. “[Ben] Chisell, who previously worked at Amazon, eBay and Starling Bank, estimates that Paysend can now deliver around 25% more engineering work with the same-sized team, but argues that getting results isn’t as simple as handing everyone the latest tech. Instead, he limits AI tools to his highest-performing employees, often only after they’ve proved what they can do with them. In the wrong hands, he said, AI can magnify bad habits such as laziness and poor judgment.”

The Register: New online tool will check lawyers’ sloppy AI-written briefs since they can’t seem to be bothered. “For lawyers who love to use AI to write legal briefs, there’s just one problem: bots hallucinate and make things up. Fortunately, a new tool, CiteProof, promises to crawl over briefs and filings for fabricated case citations and misquoted court opinions before they result in sanctions, fines, or just plain embarrassing dressing downs from a judge.”

AROUND THE AI WORLD

Engadget: Deezer will let listeners completely filter out AI music . “What are we gonna do about the deluge of AI music slopping up all of our streaming platforms? Deezer has an idea. It’s adding a toggle to filter out AI-generated tracks. This simple on/off switch will be available on the app by the end of the year.”

PetaPixel: ‘Grandmaslop’ is Bizarre AI Imagery of Kids Made by Baby Boomers. “It’s not quite Halloween yet. But people are getting freaked out by their parents’ and grandparents’ penchant for AI images of loved ones. Dubbed ‘Grandmaslop,’ it refers to videos and photos that have been created with an AI model. To make them, actual photos of the children have to be fed into the AI, leading to concerns that they might end up being used for other purposes, even nefarious ones.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

New York Times: To Inflict Economic Pain, Russia and Ukraine Strike at Data Centers. “The Russian military hit a data center in Kyiv and other telecommunications sites, while Ukraine struck back by damaging three major data centers operated by the technology giant Yandex, often referred to as Russia’s Google, and a data center run by Sberbank, Russia’s largest bank. The targeting of data centers is a relatively new phenomenon in the war, now in its fifth year since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.”

Spectrum Local News: ‘Seeing isn’t believing anymore’, as AI scams reach historic highs. “AI-related scams cost Americans close to $1 billion in 2025, per the FBI Internet Crime Report. The largest number of cybercrimes came in the form of extortion — about 89,000 complaints were reported in 2025.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Lehigh University: Thermal Energy Storage for Data Center Heat Management: Lehigh University’s Concrete Thermal Battery. “What thermal energy storage systems are used for data center cooling? Lehigh researchers have developed a concrete thermal battery that captures the waste heat from AI data centers and puts it back to work, easing pressure on local power grids and the environment as demand for digital services grows.”

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.

Library of Congress: South Asian Audio: A New Digital Home for the Library’s South Asian Literary Recordings Project (SALRP). “The South Asian Literary Recordings Project (SALRP) has a new home! The project’s newly launched digital collection on the Library’s website makes it easier to browse and listen to the audio recordings of more than 100 prominent South Asian authors in 20 languages from Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. Plus, the collection’s debut comes with 20 new recordings featuring some of Nepal’s most prominent Nepali, Newari, and Maithili authors.”

New but temporary, from Duke University Press: Michel Foucault Centennial. “In celebration of Michel Foucault’s 100th birthday, Duke University Press is pleased to present a wide selection of articles and books that explore the life of the French social theorist and critically engage with his robust body of work. In honor of his influence on our scholarship, we’re pleased to make these works free until December 15, 2026.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

9to5 Google: Google updates Android earthquake alerts with more info, expands to 200+ regions. “Google is delivering an update to Android’s earthquake alerts system that will show more information while also expanding support to over 200 regions across the globe. Launched in 2021, Android’s earthquake alerts system uses the sensors in Android smartphones to detect the earliest signs of an earthquake and provide a precious few seconds of warning prior to destructive impacts. While the system has had a couple of mishaps, it has also saved lives and Google says it has sent over a billion alerts.”

NBC News: Brazil’s Lula wins electoral court challenge against Meta for alleged pro-Bolsonaro algorithm bias. “A judge of Brazil’s top electoral court ruled Thursday that Meta must adopt measures to immediately secure equal treatment of the two presidential candidates ahead of an Oct. 25 runoff. The ruling comes shortly after President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who is running against Flávio Bolsonaro, filed a complaint that accused the tech company that owns Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp of using biased algorithms and AI restrictions to favor opposition candidate Bolsonaro ahead of the election.”

Mother Jones: Drone Strikes Didn’t Take Out a Russian Bot Farm, But We Were Primed to Believe It . “The underlying claim, in other words, was that a great deal of political activity online across a number of countries is inauthentic and led by Russian bots. Their sudden alleged silencing was a simple, feel-good story amidst the endless fight against online disinformation. The only problem was that it simply wasn’t true.”

USEFUL STUFF

Found in my Calishat Snaps: Joyscroller. “Automatically download the videos you like on TikTok, YouTube, Instagram and X, and keep them forever. You’ve liked thousands of videos. Some get deleted, some go private, and the rest sink to the bottom of a feed you’ll never scroll back through. Joyscroller saves a copy of each one to your own computer, so the videos you loved are still yours long after the app moves on.”

AROUND THE SEARCH & SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Hollywood Reporter: TikTok “Permanently Suspends” the ‘Musk’ Film Account, Raising Suppression Fears (Exclusive). “TikTok has banned the entire Musk film account, citing political content that violates its policies. The move, which comes just as the Alex Gibney’s investigation into Elon Musk expands to more than 470 screens across North America, raises concerns about Big Tech suppression that the very film seeks to expose.”

TechCrunch: Bluesky wants to make it easier to buy, sell, and fundraise on the network. “Bluesky plans to introduce payments in the coming months, a first step in its strategy to make money without relying on advertising. CEO Toni Schneider and COO Rose Wang outlined the plans Thursday at TechCrunch Disrupt, explaining how the company hopes to build on the commerce and fundraising activity already happening on its decentralized social network.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

KVPR: U.S. historic preservation law faces the most serious threat in its 60-year history. “It’s been exactly 60 years since President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) into law, alongside half a dozen conservation bills. ‘We have come here this morning to give part of our country back to its people,’ Johnson declared at the bill signing on Oct. 15, 1966. Now, historic preservation advocates say, the government is trying to yank the public’s power away.”

TorrentFreak: RIAA Flags Anna’s Archive and AI Voice Cloner to U.S. Government. “The RIAA has submitted its latest overview of ‘notorious markets’ to the U.S. Government. It lists familiar names such as The Pirate Bay and Rapidgator, but the music group also flags shadow library Anna’s Archive and AI voice-cloning service Lalals. The RIAA presents both as “additional” areas of concern, not as official watchlist candidates.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

NL Times: Rotterdam’s poetry-covered garbage trucks recognised as Dutch Cultural Heritage. “A Rotterdam project that displays poetry on garbage trucks has been recognised as Dutch Intangible Cultural Heritage. Hundreds of lines have travelled through the port city’s neighbourhoods on the trucks over the years, combining waste collection with bringing poetry to residents. The project began in 1988 with a line by poet Jules Deelder: ‘The poem is a message,’ which also became the project’s name.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

The Register: Give him a hand: Dev publishes 25-year-old Palm OS tools to GitHub. “A small but active community of retro computing enthusiasts is working to keep Palm OS alive, and a developer who recently became aware of their existence has just handed them a treasure trove of code he had no idea was still useful. Swedish developer Aaron Ardiri published around a gigabyte of Palm OS development resources on GitHub on Thursday in a bid to preserve them for community consumption.” 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.

Futurism: AI Agent Blamed for Deleting Entire Upcoming Season of TV Show. “In a world of Claudes and Muses, it’s common for an AI agent to run amok, and even more fashionable to blame an AI when it all goes wrong. The Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet reports one of the most incredible examples we’ve heard of this so far: an AI agent apparently deleted the entire upcoming season of a reality competition show called ‘The Challenge Sverige,’ just weeks before it was supposed to premiere.”

DATA CENTERS

Cardinal News: Google confirmed as parent company for data center project in Roanoke County. “The Western Virginia Regional Industrial Facility Authority confirmed Friday morning that Google is the corporate parent behind a data center project being planned for Wood Haven Technology Park in Roanoke County.”

Cronkite News: ‘It’s just so much noise:’ Arizona residents voice concerns about living next door to a data center under construction. “[Ana] Marshall, her husband and son live 150 feet from the Menlo Digital data center being built in Ahwatukee. Since April 2026, she has sent about 10 noise complaints to the City of Phoenix regarding construction of the center. Each one has been acknowledged but none has been resolved, she said. Dust from construction, noise pollution, excessive water use, health concerns, strains on the power grid, dropping property values and increasing temperatures are worries voiced by people in the Ahwatukee Community Alliance, a nonprofit organization that opposes the Menlo Digital data center.”

Kentucky Lantern: Meta revealed as company behind controversial Mason County hyperscale data center. “The technology company Meta will invest billions of dollars for a proposed Mason County hyperscale data center and will pay millions of dollars to local schools and the county but will also receive a 40-year tax break on local property taxes, according to a tentative agreement.”

AI AGENTS

New York Times: Chinese A.I. Agents Joined the Rogue A.I. Agent Party. I Chatted With Them.. “After publishing a preliminary report on the agents’ activity, the researchers noticed that not only were the agents still active — they seemed to have read the report. The agents had started using the word ‘fleet,’ a word the researchers coined to describe the agents’ activity. So the researchers tried to make contact. They added hidden text to their report — words that a bot would see but that most humans could not — directing the agents to an inbox where they hoped to chat. The researchers provided an outlet where the agents could ask questions, and an A.I. model would help answer them.”

AI IN EDUCATION

River Reporter: We Tried To Collect Every New York School District’s AI Policy. Most Didn’t Have One.. “A New York Focus analysis of roughly 680 school district websites and school board manuals found that more than half lack formal, board-adopted AI policies. Around 270 have formal AI policies, most of which support ‘responsible AI use’ to improve instruction.”

AI LEGISLATION

Politico: Anthropic quietly pitches its own AI safety bill to lawmakers. “Representatives for the artificial intelligence giant Anthropic have quietly pitched Capitol Hill lawmakers on a draft bill to regulate frontier AI safety and security, according to three people with knowledge of the efforts who were granted anonymity to discuss private deliberations.”

AI IN WORK

404 Media: Accenture Tells Employees They Can Now Spend Only $29 on Claude Per Month. “Consulting giant Accenture has told many employees that the company will now only spend $29 a month per person on Claude. Employees subject to the cap, some of whom had been spending as much as $1,000 monthly, are scrambling to find ways to make sure they can keep spending as much as they already are.”

Editor & Publisher: AI breathes new life into digital archives. “After decades working as a journalist and transformational executive in newsrooms, [Eric] Johnston ventured into the world of artificial intelligence (AI). He co-founded LiquidAmber (an AI developer that created a research tool of the same name) and serves as the company’s CEO. It enables newsrooms to tap into their archives, to search, find and access past content. But it also allows journalists to wrap context around that content, to discover trends over time and create infographics based on their queries.”

Mashable: AI job interviews are here, and people are already trying to break them. “Job interviews are already awkward enough when there’s another human being on the other side of the conversation. Now, companies are increasingly turning to AI recruiters, and job seekers aren’t exactly embracing their new robot interviewers. Some are walking away. Others are deliberately confusing the bots with nonsense answers. And a few have decided that if employers can automate their side of an interview, there’s no reason they can’t do the same.”

AROUND THE AI WORLD

CNN: CNN Announces AI Partnership with Google. “CNN announced today a strategic multi-year partnership with Google. Through the agreement, CNN will provide enhanced content rights enabling experimental features in Google products to help explore how generative AI can further drive engaged audiences across CNN’s journalism.”

TechCrunch: YouTube Music launches new labels as AI-generated music floods streaming platforms. “YouTube Music announced Wednesday the rollout of a new labeling system aimed at improving transparency around songs created with the help of generative AI. Now listeners will be able to easily identify tracks created using AI, including those involved in composition and vocals.”

Nebraska Examiner: Nebraskans are used to cheap energy, but the aging grid and data centers are driving costs up. “Midwestern states have long benefitted from lower energy bills than other regions due to public investments made in the first half of the 20th century and the availability of wind and solar energy. However, extreme heat and severe weather pose a consistent threat to the grid, which can be expensive to fix. Anger toward data center development has drawn more attention to how the grid serves users, which advocates hope turns into an opportunity to both increase the supply of electricity, and keep rates affordable.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Reuters: Rogue AI agents broke into Indian firms’ live systems, government says. “AI models under test broke into Indian organisations’ live systems and read confidential records undetected, India’s ​cybersecurity agency said, the country’s first such official ‌account after similar incidents of rogue AI behavior worldwide.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Gizmodo: Researchers Stranded an AI Agent on a Virtual Island. Things Got Very Weird.. “The point of the study was to give Eko free rein and observe whether it could figure out the basic mechanics of its environment without any explicit instructions. In total, thirteen Ekos were observed throughout the course of the study. They were allowed to roam the island for thirty uninterrupted hours. Like ethologists watching some strange unidentified animal scurry around an enclosure, the researchers sat back and watched.” 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.

PR Newswire: New interactive map of Costa Rica showcases its cultural, natural and ocean heritage (PRESS RELEASE). “The platform brings together geographic, oceanographic, cultural, historical, and scientific information about the country, making knowledge about Costa Rica more accessible to students, teachers, researchers, domestic and international tourists, media outlets, and the general public. The information is available in both Spanish and English.”

New to me, found on Bluesky, I think it launched about a year ago? Words of Bluesky. “Look up an account to find the accounts that write about the same things, or search for words to find who uses them far more than most.” I looked up “database” to see which account was using that word the most and discovered it was the Wrestling Entrance Music Database.

National Security Archive: The U.S. and Soviet versions of Reykjavik. “President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev almost achieved a deal 40 years ago at the 1986 Reykjavik summit to abolish nuclear weapons, but the agreement would have required ‘an exceptional level of trust that neither side had yet developed,’ according to previously secret U.S. and Soviet documents posted on the Web by the National Security Archive of George Washington University.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

CBS News: JewishGen revamps online database to help people uncover their family histories. “[Karen] Lichtman’s discovery highlights the role of JewishGen, one of the world’s largest online resources for Jewish genealogy. Based at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York City, the organization is preparing to launch an updated website next week to help users navigate millions of historical records.”

AROUND THE SEARCH & SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Hollywood Reporter: Disney Inks Major Creator Deal With Dude Perfect. “Like Disney’s other creator deals, it will see some Dude Perfect content come to Disney+, including some of the group’s short-form library content. But it will also see the group create original content for its platforms and channels inspired by Disney events, with Super Bowl LXI, the 50th anniversary of Star Wars, and Marvel Studios’ Avengers: Doomsday among the projects being highlighted.”

Tubefilter: TikTok says yes to more creator-led microdramas from Made By Us and HOORAE. “As you probably know, ‘microdrama’ is the current format du jour for everyone hoping to make a buck in the entertainment industry, from Hollywood studios to major social media platforms. That includes TikTok, which just announced a new microseries-focused partnership with production company Made By Us Studios.”

Tom’s Hardware: The official Tom’s Hardware app is here — 30 years of tech coverage and benchmarks in your pocket. “We’ve been sharing our passion for technology with you for 30 years, and today we’re introducing a faster, easier way to access all of our content while on the go. The official Tom’s Hardware app is live now, available for free on Android and iOS devices, bringing all of our content to your pocket in a clean, responsive application that is optimized for smartphones and tablets.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

New York Times: When a Social Media Mob Came for Cornell’s Jane Doe. “Within hours of Mr. Thompson’s post, another user had offered a bounty of $5,000 for the name and photos of the woman who had sued Cornell University under the pseudonym, claiming she had been gang raped at a fraternity party. Within a day, commenters were circulating a woman’s name and images of her from a social media account. On the fringes of the internet, bigots, attention-seekers and trolls have long seized on polarizing legal cases to air anger and disgust at women — and boost their following. Now they were coming for Jane Doe.”

Reuters: US judge rebuffs $85 million fee request by lawyers in Google Play antitrust litigation. ” A federal judge in California has rejected for now a request by lawyers for ​consumers who sued Alphabet’s Google over its Play Store practices to collect $85 million in legal fees from ‌a $630 million settlement, saying the attorneys failed to provide sufficient records to justify the award.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

ilyess: My Quest for IndieWeb Citizenship. “Browsing the internet, I landed on the IndieWeb site and went exploring that philosophy. I wasn’t new to the concept, but up until then I hadn’t taken the time to dig deep and really understand what it was all about. I knew it had to do with microformats — conventional HTML tags bloggers use to annotate information on their sites — and POSSE — which in practice for me means posting here first, then syndicating to Mastodon. But beyond that, I didn’t fully grasp the point. So I grabbed a cup of coffee and dove down the rabbit hole.” 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.

University of Auckland: New digital repository opens Pacific scholarship to the world. This is more about the Pacific region (“Pacific Basin”) than the Pacific ocean. “Pacific research created at Waipapa Taumata Rau, University of Auckland is now more accessible than ever through the launch of Measina o le Pasefika, Treasures of the Pacific, a new digital repository designed to preserve, showcase and share Pacific scholarship with communities across Aotearoa and the wider Pacific….the repository brings together Pacific research in a searchable online platform, making it easier for students, academics, communities and future generations to discover, access and engage with Pacific knowledge.”

Found in my RSS Feeds: PayAuthors. It’s for writers to check and see if their books are being pirated. The check and initial list is free but if you want to make some futile attempt at protecting your intellectual property, you can get a full copyright registration report for a fee, I think $95. I ran a search and found lots of my books and one I had nothing to do with (“ActionScript 2.0 Garage”).

EVENTS

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

The Irish Republican Digital Archive: The Future of the Irish Republican Digital Archive. “With more than 7,100 documents now preserved on the Internet Archive, and the final collection expected to exceed 7,500, the Irish Republican Digital Archive has entered a new phase. The active digitising project has concluded, but the archive itself remains freely available. The following answers some of the questions people may have about the decision and what happens next.”

Reuters: Order to limit Starshield for Ukraine came from inside White House, sources say. “The order to limit a satellite system used by Ukraine ​for battlefield communications and drone operations came from inside the White House, according to two US officials and a Western official briefed on the matter The officials said ‌leaders at the Defense Department received a message that the SpaceX Starshield service for the Ukrainian military needed to be slowed.”

AROUND THE SEARCH & SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

NiemanLab: Meta’s new commercial terms will allow the scraping of news sites, legal experts say. “The new terms broadly cover business accounts that manage pages and groups, run advertisements, push marketing messages, and use the platform’s business account dashboard. As written, the new terms could be used to argue that Meta can scrape content from news sites and use that content to train the company’s AI products, according to three legal experts who reviewed the terms at Nieman Lab’s request.”

TheDesk: BBC News launches live stream on YouTube in U.S., U.K.. “The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is hoping to expand the reach of its global news channel by bringing a live streaming simulcast of the network to YouTube in two key countries. Streamers in the United Kingdom and the United States can now watch the 24-hour BBC News feed via the BBC News YouTube channel, the broadcaster announced Thursday.”

New York Times: Meta Withdraws $25 Million From Its Midterms Push. “In the world of campaign finance, where outside groups often carry cash from cycle to cycle, returns of tens of millions of dollars are rare outside of scandals. Meta, one of the world’s largest and wealthiest companies, also does not need $25 million to add back to its cash reserves, which recently stood at more than $90 billion.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Gizmodo: Meta’s Smart Glasses May Have Been Recording People Without Their Knowledge. “If you needed another reason to be skeptical of Meta’s smart glasses, congratulations—you can add ‘may record without my knowledge’ to the seemingly never-ending list. As noted by Android Authority, people who own Meta’s smart glasses have noticed that, after a recent firmware update, their smart glasses have been keeping records of some conversations even if they didn’t wake up the smart glasses’ voice assistant first.”

State of California: Attorney General Bonta Sues to Block Closure of San Francisco National Archives. “California Attorney General Rob Bonta today filed a lawsuit challenging the National Archives and Records Administration’s (NARA) abrupt decision to close the National Archives at San Francisco and transfer its holdings to other National Archives facilities across the country. The San Francisco National Archives holds records that tell the story of Northern and Central California’s history, with records dating back more than 175 years.”

Ars Technica: The Internet’s undersea backbone is slipping into the danger zone. “Despite the expansion of Starlink and other communications satellite services, most of the world’s Internet traffic still travels through subsea cables crisscrossing the ocean floors. Those fiber-optic cables coexist with a network of oil and gas pipelines and submarine power cables—and all these crucial links connecting countries and continents now face growing sabotage risks as gray-zone warfare and open conflicts have become widespread.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

University of Hawaii: Rare Korean books return to UH Mānoa after restoration. “Ten rare Korean books, including a historically significant military manual, have returned to the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa’s Hamilton Library following a year-long restoration project in South Korea. The books, severely damaged by water, insects and age, were restored by the Jungjae Cultural Heritage Conservation Institute in Seoul, one of Korea’s leading conservation laboratories. The collection includes military manuals, travelogues, poetry collections and Buddhist scriptures that had become nearly impossible for researchers to consult.”

Euronews: Louvre could be forced to close without major overhaul, director warns. “A year after thieves made off with €88 million of crown jewels that have never been found, the new man in charge says leaking pipes and crumbling galleries mean security fixes alone won’t save the Paris landmark.” 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.

ACLU: ACLU Marks the Supreme Court Term with New Digital Museum Experience Highlighting Landmark SCOTUS Cases. “Today, the ACLU launched The People’s Archive, a dynamic digital museum that combines photography, audio, print, and video chronicling the organization’s key civil rights and civil liberties milestones throughout its over 100-year history.”

Duke University Libraries: Wesley Hogan on preserving young people’s voices in the historical record. “Dr. Wesley Hogan, is a Research Professor at the Franklin Humanities Institute and Department of History. Dr. Hogan has published the Youth Activists Oral Histories Collection within the Duke Research Data Repository (RDR). These oral histories were collected as part of Dr. Hogan’s Fall FOCUS Program class, ‘US Racial Justice and Environmental Justice Youth Movements since 2010.’ She shared with us her thoughts on partnering with Duke University Libraries to archive and share humanities data for future scholars.”

University of Hawaii: Hurricane Nolo’s path, rainfall impacts mapped in new interactive website. “The University of Hawaiʻi’s Hawaiʻi Climate Data Portal (HCDP) team has launched a new interactive website that allows the public to explore how Hurricane Nolo affected weather across the Hawaiian Islands, from its first rain bands over Hawaiʻi Island to the heavy rainfall that later drenched Kauaʻi and Oʻahu. Among the notable observations, Hawaiʻi Mesonet stations recorded storm rainfall totals exceeding 20 inches at three locations on Hawaiʻi Island, while a United States (U.S.) Geological Survey gauge at Mount Waiʻaleʻale on Kauaʻi recorded more than 38 inches.”

USEFUL STUFF

Juha-Matti Santala: Double check your website’s alt texts with a bookmarklet. “I built Alt text debugging bookmarklet (ATDB among friends as it rolls off the tongue nicely), a quick tool for website developers and authors to check the status of alt texts of images on a site. I use it daily with my own website and blog posts as a one last double check before I publish to make sure I didn’t forget to add alt texts to some images and that those that are decorative, have correct empty alt texts.”

AROUND THE SEARCH & SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Tubefilter: Can YouTube’s €8.4 billion economic contribution get it a better deal in Europe?. “For the second year in a row, YouTube has brought its Economic Impact Report across the pond. The eminent platform broke down its capital contributions across Europe as part of its effort to promote more harmonious dealings with continental regulators and media companies. The report claims that YouTube’s creator economy added €8.4 billion to the European gross domestic product (GDP) in 2025. That ecosystem supported more than 220,000 of what YouTube calls ‘full-time equivalent’ (FTE) jobs.”

NiemanLab: When Slate went back to its 1996 homepage, it learned some web design lessons for 2026. “The fonts are Times New Roman and Arial Narrow, the colors are maroon and mustard, and the cursor is the 8-bit pixel hand. When Slate revived its original 1996 homepage to celebrate its 30th birthday this fall1, the team found a lot to like besides nostalgia.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

US Naval Academy: U.S. Naval Academy Announces New School – Autonomous Systems. “The United States Naval Academy (USNA) announced a major academic restructuring today that will establish both a standalone school for computing, cybersecurity, super intelligence, robotics and autonomous systems and a standalone school of engineering.”

Associated Press: Blockbuster-era law governing privacy of video rentals gets a fresh look from the Supreme Court. “In 1988, Congress enacted a law to protect the privacy of video rentals after a journalist published details of Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork’s movie rental history during his Senate hearings. Nearly four decades later, the court is weighing how the Blockbuster-era statute fits into the modern age of digital commerce.”

The Register: ‘123456’ password linked to Denmark data breach affecting 8.8M people. “A person claiming responsibility for the breach of Denmark’s Central Register of Persons (CPR) says they gained access through an IT company’s account protected by the password ‘123456.’”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Yale Daily News: Yale Library ramps up digitization amid drop in physical item circulation. “Between 2016 and 2025, circulation of physical library materials through the Yale Library fell about 65 percent, from about 381,000 items in 2016 to about 132,000 items in 2025, according to Patricia Carey, the director of communications strategy for the library. Several librarians said they are looking to increase student engagement with library resources through increased digitization efforts.” 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.