Associated Press: Book ban attempts hit record high in 2022, library org says. “Attempted book bans and restrictions at school and public libraries continue to surge, setting a record in 2022, according to a new report from the American Library Association released Thursday.”
Columbia Climate School: New Website Tracks Inflation Reduction Act’s Climate Provisions. “Columbia Law School’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law and Environmental Defense Fund unveiled a new website today to track implementation of the climate change-related provisions in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. The website will also provide users with valuable information about the programs, protections, incentives, and tax credits offered through this historic legislation.”
Federal News Network: FOIA backlogs on the rise after record number of requests . “Freedom of Information Act backlogs soared at some key agencies after the public filed a record number of FOIA requests in fiscal 2022. Agencies received 928,353 requests last year and processed 878,420 requests, both record highs, according to the Justice Department’s Office of Information Policy. Agencies were required to upload their fiscal 2022 annual FOIA reports by March 1.”
ABC News (Australia): Murray River flood photos on social media to help create archive for future planning. “When water levels along the South Australian stretch of the river started increasing in mid-to-late 2022, so too did the number of photographs capturing the changing landscape. Multiple social media pages dedicated to sharing visual updates of floodwaters have gained thousands of audience members far and wide.”
UK Web Archive Blog: UK Web Archive Technical Update – Winter 2022. “As in previous years, the 2022 Domain Crawl continued to run right up until the end of the year. Overall, things ran smoothly, with only brief outages for upgrading the virtual server over time as the size of the frontier grew.”
CNN: The year that brought Silicon Valley back down to earth. “On the first trading day of 2022, Apple hit a new milestone for the tech industry: the iPhone maker became the first publicly traded company to hit a $3 trillion market cap, with Microsoft and Google not far behind. As eye-popping as that valuation was, there were headlines speculating about how long it would be before Apple and its rivals topped $5 trillion.”
Irish Examiner: The social media food influences pushing Irish butter. “Big American dairy processors Land O’Lakes said autumn 2022 butter sales forecasts were much exceeded, thanks to butter board demand. But farmers on this side of the Atlantic have benefited also, because many social media food influencers have made a point of recommending that only high-quality butter be used, with some naming Kerrygold, or recommending that Irish butter be used.” I know this story seems a bit silly but it’s important to understand what a huge economic impact influencers can have. Of course, if you understand that then you start obsessing over how little oversight there is over influencers…
WIRED: The Worst Hacks of 2022. “Here’s WIRED’s look back on the year’s worst breaches, leaks, ransomware attacks, state-sponsored hacking campaigns, and digital takeovers. If the first years of the 2020s are any indication, the digital security field in 2023 will be more bizarre and unpredictable than ever. Stay alert, and stay safe out there.”
Techdirt: New Year’s Message: The Opportunity To Build A Better Internet Is Here. Right Now.. “For large parts of this year, I actually wondered if there was really that much to be optimistic about in tech, but over the last few months I have to admit that I’ve been the most optimistic I’ve been in a long time. I previewed just some of my thinking just about a week ago when I noted that I can’t see any reason for anyone to invest time in building up a social graph on yet another centralized social media network, now that we’re seeing how a decentralized one can actually work, and work well.”
Polygon: How NFT video games crashed and burned. “Less than 12 months ago, it felt as if 2022 would be the year NFTs took off in the video game world. Companies like EA, Ubisoft, Square Enix, Zynga, Niantic, and Take-Two Interactive all, at one point, said that they were brainstorming ways to add NFTs into their games. The idea being that non-fungible tokens would replace everything from loot boxes to character skins to even characters themselves. But none of that ended up happening.”
The Verge: In 2022, cozy games went from niche to video game fixture. “While open-world games with low stakes and minimal violence have existed for decades, it wasn’t until more recently that they became a genre all of their own, referred to as ‘cozy’ or ‘wholesome’ games. The mechanics and goals in games like Stardew Valley, Ooblets, and Cozy Grove may vary, but they share a common vibe wholly separate from the cis-male, RGB streamer setup that’s become analogous with gaming culture.” Hello from Cozy Rimworld.
The Next Web: EU tech policy predictions: What to expect in 2023. “TNW asked IT experts across the bloc what they predict from the EU’s policies in 2023. All expect significant changes in legislation, with certain technologies particularly prominent in their forecasts.”
Mashable: The internet used to be fun. Remember?. “Today, Corn Kid’s glee over the buttery goodness of an ear of corn feels so precious because the internet now feels so sour and divisive. Politics embitters so much of our online experience, and the rest of it is suffocated by negativity or bullying. Meanwhile, cultural content has become so derivative, closer to regurgitation than reinvention.”
New York Times: The Tech That Will Invade Our Lives in 2023. “Each year, I look ahead at what’s new in technology to predict the tech that may affect your life in a big way — and the tech that will most likely be a fad. Before we get into that, though, let’s take a quick look back at 2022.”
Google Blog: 22 products and features we launched in 2022. “We’re just about to auld lang syne-off for the year, but before we do we wanted to take a quick look back on some highlights from the past 12 months! Here are 22 Google products and features launched in 2022.”
