Archive of ‘Digital literacy’ category

RealMax Qian AR

RealMax Qian review: wide FOV AR is amazing!

RealMax Qian(乾) is the second iteration of the Realmax augmented reality glasses (the first one was the Realmax 100). These augmented reality devices are manufactured by Chinese company Realmax and are characterized by a very wide field of view. While many other AR glasses (like Nreal Light or HoloLens 2) have a Field Of View in the 50° ballpark, RealMax glasses have always had ones above 100°, for a more immersive augmented experience. This makes the RealMax quite unique in this field, considering that the only other headset that is able to offer such a feature is the Project North Star, which anyway is not standalone like this device.

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more on AR in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=Augmented+reality

Australia and QAnon

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/feb/16/how-australia-became-fertile-ground-for-misinformation-and-qanon

Last year the Institute for Strategic Dialogue released a report that found QAnon’s following had grown considerably in Australia during 2020, with Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter driving increased engagement.

The report found Australia was the fourth largest country for QAnon activity, behind the US, UK and Canada. Its presence in Australia is also evident on less mainstream sites. For example as Canadian QAnon research Marc-Andre Argentino has pointed out, there were at least six Australian Q “research boards” on the site 8kun with about 4,000 posts by January last year. That had increased to 11 boards by the start of 2021.

Last year, Guardian Australia revealed QAnon had found a follower in Tim Stewart, a family friend of the prime Scott Morrison. Stewart was behind one of Australia’s largest QAnon-linked accounts, BurnedSpy34.

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more on QAnon in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=qanon
more on QAnon in Germany: https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=qanon+germany

Parler new web host

https://www.npr.org/2021/02/15/968116346/after-weeks-of-being-off-line-parler-finds-a-new-web-host

SkySilk, a Web infrastructure company based outside of Los Angeles, is now hosting Parler, SkySilk’s chief executive, Kevin Matossian, confirmed to NPR in an interview.

Matossian refused to comment on the terms of the arrangement, or under what conditions SkySilk will do business with Parler, which was heavily used by the rioters in connection with the violent storming of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.

In new content guidelines released by Parler on Monday, the company says it will deploy a “privacy-preserving process” using an algorithm and human moderators to police content that threatens or incites violence.

Additionally, Parler says there will be a “trolling filter” in which content that attacks someone based on race, sex, sexual orientation or religion will be covered up. Yet those who want to view the content will be allowed by clicking through the filter.

Mark Meckler, one of the early creators of the Tea Party movement and now Parler’s interim CEO, said the platform has been rebuilt on independent technology and is “not reliant on so-called ‘Big Tech’ for its operations.”

Indeed, Parler has turned to Web infrastructure companies that have welcomed extremist and hate-filled websites, including Epik, a firm based outside of Seattle that supports Parler’s domain, as well as sites including InfoWars, BitChute and Patriots.win, previously known as The Donald.

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more on Parler in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=parler

campus wide infrastructure for immersive

Cabada, E., Kurt, E., & Ward, D. (2021). Constructing a campus-wide infrastructure for virtual reality. College & Undergraduate Libraries, 0(0), 1–24. https://doi.org/10.1080/10691316.2021.1881680

As an interdisciplinary hub, academic libraries are uniquely positioned to serve the full lifecycle of immersive environment needs, from development through archiving of successful projects. As and informal learning environment that or discipline neutral and high traffic, the academic library can serve as a clearinghouse for experimentation and transmission of best practices across colleges.

these founda­tional questions:
1. What VR infrastructure needs do faculty and researchers have?
2. Where is campus support lagging?
3. What current partnerships exist?
4. What and where is the campus level of interest in VR?
As marketing for workshops and programs can be challenging, particu­larly for large institutions, data was collected on where workshop partici­pants learned about Step Into VR. The responses show that users learned of the workshops from a variety of ways with email ( 41 % ) as the most cited method (Figure 4). These marketing emails were sent through distributed listservs that reached nearly the entire campus population. Facebook was called out specifically and represented the second largest marketing method at 29% with the library website, friends, instructors, and digital signage rep­resenting the remaining marketing channels.
While new needs continue to emerge, the typical categories of consult­ation support observed include:
• Recommendations on hardware selection, such as choosing the best VR headset for viewing class content
• Guidance on developing VR applications that incorporate domain-spe­cific curricular content
• Support for curricular integration of VR
• Recommendations on 360 capture media and equipment for document­ing environments or experiences, such as the GoPro Fusion and Insta360 One X
• Advice on editing workflows, including software for processing and ren­dering of 360 content
Alex Fogarty
p. 9
While many library patrons understand the basic concepts of recording video on a camera, 360 cameras present a large divergence from this pro­cess in several primary ways. The first is a 360 camera captures every direc­tion at once, so there is no inherent “focus,” and no side of a scene that is not recorded. This significantly changes how someone might compose a video recording, and also adds complexity to post-production, including how to orient viewers within a scene. The second area of divergence is that many of these devices, especially the high-end versions, are recording each lens to a separate data file or memory card and these ftles need to be com­bined, or “stitched,” at a later time using software specific to the camera. A final concern is that data ftles for high-resolution 3 D capture can be huge, requiring both large amounts of disk space and high-end processors and graphic cards for detailed editing to occur. For example, the Insta360 Pro 2 has 6 sensors all capable of data recording at 120 Mbps for a grand total of 720 Mbps. This translates into 43.2 gigabytes of data for every minute o

AT&T and Internet

You shouldn’t have to publicly humiliate AT&T to get usable internet

https://www.theverge.com/2021/2/12/22280964/att-provides-fiber-after-newspaper-ad-media-coverage

Earlier this month, Aaron Epstein spent $10,000 to buy an ad in The Wall Street Journal to tell AT&T’s CEO he wasn’t happy with his internet service — service that was limited to a paltry 3Mbps (via Ars Technica). Now, AT&T has him hooked up with a fiber connection, and he’s getting over 300 Mbps up and down. All it took was getting interviewed by Arsthe ad going viral on Twitter, and a Stephen Colbert mention.

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more on netneutrality in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=netneutrality

China hackers

https://soundcloud.com/bloomberg-business/the-big-hack-part-1-read-aloud

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-10-04/the-big-hack-how-china-used-a-tiny-chip-to-infiltrate-america-s-top-companies

Nested on the servers’ motherboards, the testers found a tiny microchip, not much bigger than a grain of rice, that wasn’t part of the boards’ original design. Amazon reported the discovery to U.S. authorities, sending a shudder through the intelligence community. Elemental’s servers could be found in Department of Defense data centers, the CIA’s drone operations, and the onboard networks of Navy warships. And Elemental was just one of hundreds of Supermicro customers.

interdiction, consists of manipulating devices as they’re in transit from manufacturer to customer. This approach is favored by U.S. spy agencies, according to documents leaked by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden. The other method involves seeding changes from the very beginning.

In emailed statements, Amazon (which announced its acquisition of Elemental in September 2015), Apple, and Supermicro disputed summaries of Bloomberg Businessweek’s reporting.

The Chinese government didn’t directly address questions about manipulation of Supermicro servers, issuing a statement that read, in part, “Supply chain safety in cyberspace is an issue of common concern, and China is also a victim.” The FBI and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, representing the CIA and NSA, declined to comment.

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more on hackers in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=hacker

Cancel Culture

https://www.npr.org/2021/02/10/965815679/is-cancel-culture-the-future-of-the-gop

Six or seven years ago, the idea of “canceling” someone was largely used among younger people online, particularly on Black Twitter, as Vox’s Aja Romano has explained.

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more on cancel culture in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=cancel+culture

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