morningbuzz

Mount Zion Hospital, Facebook, Microsoft, More: Tuesday ResearchBuzz, December 9, 2025

NEW RESOURCES

UC San Francisco: Voices of Mount Zion Hospital: Physician Oral Histories Digitized and Online. “A trove of 54 oral-history audio recordings from Mount Zion Hospital, now part of the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) Medical Center at Mount Zion, conducted between 1995 and 1997, is now available online.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Associated Press: Massachusetts court hears arguments in lawsuit alleging Meta designed apps to be addictive to kids. “Massachusetts’ highest court heard oral arguments Friday in the state’s lawsuit arguing that Meta designed features on Facebook and Instagram to make them addictive to young users.”

Ars Technica: Microsoft drops AI sales targets in half after salespeople miss their quotas. “Microsoft has lowered sales growth targets for its AI agent products after many salespeople missed their quotas in the fiscal year ending in June, according to a report Wednesday from The Information. The adjustment is reportedly unusual for Microsoft, and it comes after the company missed a number of ambitious sales goals for its AI offerings.”

Gizmodo: Looks Like We Can Finally Kiss the Metaverse Goodbye. “According to a report from Bloomberg, Meta is expected to slash its Reality Labs budget, shaving off as much as 30%. Those cuts may be imminent, too, arriving as soon as January as Meta prepares its budget for the new calendar year.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Poynter: Help us save the digital archives of local newsrooms. “Earlier this year, we announced a new program Poynter is part of called Today’s News for Tomorrow. This Press Forward-funded project from the Internet Archive, IRE and Poynter will work with 300 local newsrooms of all shapes, sizes and mediums over the next two years to make sure those drafts get preserved and people have access to them. We’ll host three groups a year, with three live virtual sessions and three asynchronous sessions for the newsrooms chosen to take part.”

Engadget: Russia blocks Roblox, citing ‘LGBT propaganda’ as a reason. “Russia has blocked the popular gaming platform Roblox, according to a report by Reuters. The country’s communications watchdog Roskomnadzor accused the developers of distributing extremist materials and ‘LGBT propaganda.’”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Futurism: Elon Musk’s Grok AI Is Doxxing Home Addresses of Everyday People . “… a Futurism review found that the free web version of Grok will, with extremely minimal prompting, provide accurate residential addresses for non-public figures — a feature that could easily assist stalking, harassment, and other dangerous types of behavior.” Remember when Elon Musk got upset because people were tracking his private plane?

The Register: Lawyer’s 6-year-old son uses AI to build copyright infringement generator . “You don’t have to be smarter than a fifth grader (or even a first grader) to commit potential copyright infringement using AI tools. One IP attorney watched over the weekend as his young son built a bedtime story generator that used copyrighted characters without permission.”

Politico: The Netherlands shuts off Google tracking on spy job listings. “The Dutch government has quietly removed Google tracking tools from job listings for its intelligence services over concerns that the data would expose aspirant spies to U.S. surveillance.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

University of Michigan: The deadly trade-off of electronic waste recycling in Ghana. “A University of Michigan study found that people in Ghana and across the Global South who recycle electronic waste face a difficult paradox: earning livelihoods to ensure survival comes at the cost of severe long-term exposure to toxicity and dramatic environmental pollution.”

University of Washington: Social media research tool can reduce polarization — it could also lead to more user control over algorithms. “The researchers created a seamless, web-based tool that reorders content to move posts lower in a user’s feed when they contain antidemocratic attitudes and partisan animosity, such as advocating for violence or jailing supporters of the opposing party.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Hackaday: Lessons Learned After Trying MeshCore For Off-grid Text Messaging. “[Michael Lynch] recently decided to delve into the world of off-grid, decentralized communications with MeshCore, because being able to communicate wirelessly with others in a way that does not depend on traditional communication infrastructure is pretty compelling. After getting his hands on a variety of hardware and trying things out, he wrote up his thoughts from the perspective of a hardware-curious software developer.” Good morning, Internet…

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