The Atlantic – This emergency is not about to end. By Katherine J. Wu – “In the early spring of 2020, the condition we now call long COVID didn’t have a name, much less a large community of patient advocates. For the most part, clinicians dismissed its symptoms, and researchers focused on SARS-CoV-2 infections’ short-term… Continue Reading
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Monthly Archives: February 2023
OneZoom tree of life explorer
OneZoom tree of life explorer – “An interactive map of the evolutionary links between all living things known to science. Discover your favourites, see which species are under threat, and be amazed by the diversity of life on earth. Our tree of life explorer is designed to be easily accessible for everyone. We also provide… Continue Reading
UChicago scientists develop new tool to protect artists from AI mimicry
University of Chicago News: “A new tool allows artists to upload digital images with slight changes that are nearly invisible to the human eye, but confound AI art generators searching for references. “Glaze” program makes miniscule changes to confound AI art generators. Last year, the arrival of powerful AI models capable of generating original images… Continue Reading
How to Watch Hundreds of Free Movies on YouTube
Open Culture: “We lived in the age of movie theaters, then we lived in the age of home video, and now we live in the age of streaming. Like every period in the history of cinema, ours has its advantages and its disadvantages. The quasi-religiosity of the cinephile viewing experience is, arguably, not as well… Continue Reading
How does an EV battery actually work?
MIT Technology Review: “Are lithium batteries sustainable enough to fulfill the dream of the electric-car revolution? The batteries propelling electric vehicles have quickly become the most crucial component, and expense, for a new generation of cars and trucks. They represent not only the potential for cleaner transportation but also broad shifts in geopolitical power, industrial… Continue Reading
Microsoft and the unreliable AI chatbot
Futurism: “Microsoft has finally spoken out about its unhinged AI chatbot. In a new blog post, the company admitted that its Bing Chat feature is not really being used to find information — after all, it’s unable to consistently tell truth from fiction — but for “social entertainment” instead. The company found that “extended chat… Continue Reading
Worsening climate shocks risk distracting from efforts to reduce carbon emissions, creating ‘doom loop’
“The world is entering a more difficult stage of the climate and ecological crisis where its symptoms are drawing attention away from efforts to tackle its root causes, according to a new report published by the IPPR and Chatham House think tanks. Huge resources are being deployed to respond to the growing number of climate… Continue Reading
Publishers Want to End How Libraries Lend Books Online
Medium: “When the pandemic began and schools and libraries around the country were forced to close their doors, teachers and librarians were at a loss over how to get digital books into the hands of young readers and their families. The problem was so drastic that the Internet Archive (IA), a nonprofit digital library, declared… Continue Reading
How Google Ran Out of Ideas
The Atlantic – The company thinks it’s an innovator. In fact, it’s an imitator—and not the best one, either. By Cory Doctorow. “Microsoft is making a desperate play. Having spent billions on a search engine that no one uses, the company has sunk billions more into equipping it with the chatbot technology ChatGPT, on the… Continue Reading
ChatGPT Amendment Shows the EU is Regulating by Outrage
Center for Data Innovation, Patrick Grady February 13, 2023: “The EU is considering placing generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools, such as ChatGPT, in a “high risk” category in its upcoming AI bill, thereby subjecting such tools to burdensome compliance requirements. This sloppy addition needlessly stunts creativity and shows the EU is hitting the panic button… Continue Reading
Annual Transparency Index Links Corruption with Increased Violence Globally
“The 2022 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), released yesterday by Transparency International, concludes that 95% of countries have made little to no progress fighting corruption since 2017. This 21st edition of the index ranks 180 countries and territories by experts’ perceived levels of public sector corruption on a scale from 0 (highly corrupt) to 100 (very… Continue Reading
Replication Data for Organizations Involved in Humanitarian Action: Introducing a New Dataset
Egger, Clara; Schopper, Doris, 2022, “Replication Data for: Organizations Involved in Humanitarian Action: Introducing a New Dataset“, https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/52GFWC, Harvard Dataverse – “Although the humanitarian sector has gained prominence in the management of contemporary conflicts, data on the diversity of organizations involved in humanitarian aid are scarce and do not rely on well-founded inclusion criteria. This… Continue Reading
