Salon: “As the climate crisis becomes more acute — exemplified in interminable wildfire “seasons”, intense drought and extreme weather — it’s becoming clear that saving the planet will involve more than politely asking consumers to recycle their yogurt cups. Indeed, many of climate change’s effects are largely spurred by resource hoarding and inequality via the… Continue Reading
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Monthly Archives: April 2023
Nearly 1,500 books bans implemented in the first half of this school year
The Hill: “Almost 1,500 school book bans were put into place around the U.S. in the first half of the current academic year, according to PEN America. An analysis from the group released Thursday found 1,477 book bans implemented in the first half of the 2022-2023 school year, affecting 874 unique books. The six months… Continue Reading
The State of Scholarly Metadata: 2023
‘In late 2022, CCC and Media Growth Strategies undertook a thorough examination of metadata management across the research lifecycle. This in-depth review builds on an existing body of work to uncover multiple policy and system complexities and breakages, which – separately and together – create missed opportunities for the communities for whom Open Access (OA)… Continue Reading
How to Blur Parts of an Image for Free Online: 5 Tools
MakeUseOf: “If you ever share screenshots or photos online, knowing how to blur parts of your image is a handy skill to have. Whether you need to send a screenshot with confidential information to a colleague or just want to draw focus to a certain part of your image, we’ll show you how to blur… Continue Reading
AI Incident Database
AID: “Intelligent systems are currently prone to unforeseen and often dangerous failures when they are deployed to the real world. Much like the transportation sector before it (e.g., FAA and FARS) and more recently computer systems, intelligent systems require a repository of problems experienced in the real world so that future researchers and developers may… Continue Reading
How to set up two-factor authentication on your online services
The Verge: “…Authentication apps generate one-time numerical passcodes that change approximately every minute. When you log in to your service or app, it will ask for your authenticator code; you just open up the app to find the randomly generated code required to get past security. Popular options include Authy, Google Authenticator, and Microsoft Authenticator.… Continue Reading
GPT-4 will hunt for trends in medical records thanks to Microsoft and Epic
ars technica – Generative AI promises to streamline health care, but critics say not so fast. “On Monday [April 17, 2023], Microsoft and Epic Systems announced that they are bringing OpenAI’s GPT-4 AI language model into health care for use in drafting message responses from health care workers to patients and for use in analyzing… Continue Reading
The Global Expansion of Judicial Power
Hirschl, Ran, The Global Expansion of Judicial Power (March 1, 2023). Oxford Handbook of Comparative Judicial Behavior (Lee Epstein, Gunnar Grendstad, Urška Šadl, and Keren Weinshall, eds., Oxford University Press, 2023), Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4373693 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4373693 “The global expansion of judicial power is one of the most significant developments in late-20th and early-21st century… Continue Reading
Inside the secret list of websites that make AI chatbots sound smart
Washington Post: “AI chatbots have exploded in popularity over the past four months, stunning the public with their awesome abilities, from writing sophisticated term papers to holding unnervingly lucid conversations. Chatbots cannot think like humans: They do not actually understand what they say. They can mimic human speech because the artificial intelligence that powers them… Continue Reading
The Russian “Firehose of Falsehood” Propaganda Model
Rand – The Russian “Firehose of Falsehood” Propaganda Model Why It Might Work and Options to Counter It = “Since its 2008 incursion into Georgia (if not before), there has been a remarkable evolution in Russia’s approach to propaganda. This new approach was on full display during the country’s 2014 annexation of the Crimean peninsula.… Continue Reading
Podcasts as a Source of News and Information
Pew: “Following a steady increase in podcast listening over the past decade, podcasts have become a big part of the normal routine – and news diet – of many Americans, especially younger adults. Roughly half of U.S. adults say they have listened to a podcast in the past year, according to a new Pew Research… Continue Reading
Digital Privacy Legislation is Civil Rights Legislation
EFF: “As Congress ponders legislation to reform “big tech,” it must view comprehensive digital privacy legislation as desperately needed civil rights legislation, because data abuses often disproportionately harm communities already bearing the brunt of other inequalities. Harvesting and monetizing personal data whenever anyone uses social media or even vital online services has become ubiquitous, yet… Continue Reading
