Via Drought.gov: “The research-based website NationalSoilMoisture.com provides high-resolution gridded soil moisture products derived from in situ soil moisture measurements, Natural Resources Conservation Service SSURGO soil characteristics, and PRISM data. The project combines data from multiple federal, regional, and state agencies to create comprehensive data products for the United States, including Alaska, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico. These products… Continue Reading
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Monthly Archives: June 2023
Women’s Prize for Fiction winners
Abe Books: “Discover all the winning novels since 1996 – Since 1996, the Women’s Prize for Fiction has recognized and celebrated the best fiction by women writers around the world. Bestselling novelist and playwright Kate Mosse founded the UK-based award to champion women in the male-dominated awards scene. Despite writing 60% of books published, by… Continue Reading
How to keep your Google Chrome extensions from snooping on you
PopSci – Make your browsing more private and secure. If you haven’t used that extension in a while, consider getting rid of it. There’s a good chance you have a bunch of Google Chrome extensions you don’t even remember you downloaded. But these add-ons have access to your data and might be snooping around on… Continue Reading
Humans Are Biased. Generative AI Is Even Worse
Bloomberg Opinion [alt free link] – Stable Diffusion’s text-to-image model amplifies stereotypes about race and gender — here’s why that matters: “The world according to Stable Diffusion is run by White male CEOs. Women are rarely doctors, lawyers or judges. Men with dark skin commit crimes, while women with dark skin flip burgers. Stable Diffusion… Continue Reading
21st-century editors should keep their hands off 20th-century books
Washington Post Opinion & alt free link: “A number of beloved novels, for both children and adults, are being “retouched” — updated to remove overtly racist, sexist or otherwise offensive language. Publishers and literary estates — including those of best-selling mystery writer Agatha Christie, children’s author Roald Dahl and James Bond creator Ian Fleming —… Continue Reading
Wikipedia first-name-centric dataviz
Via Data is Plural: “Reader Caroline Beavon built an interactive, first-name-centric dataviz based on Morgane Laouenan et al.’s dataset of Wikipedia-notable people, featured in DIP 2022.07.20.” Continue Reading
Assigning AI: Seven Approaches for Students, with Prompts
Mollick, Ethan R. and Mollick, Lilach, Assigning AI: Seven Approaches for Students, with Prompts (June 12, 2023). Available at SSRN: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4475995 “This paper examines the transformative role of Large Language Models (LLMs) in education and their potential as learning tools, despite their inherent risks and limitations. The authors propose seven approaches for utilizing AI in… Continue Reading
Using AI to Implement Effective Teaching Strategies in Classrooms: Five Strategies, Including Prompts
Mollick, Ethan R. and Mollick, Lilach, Using AI to Implement Effective Teaching Strategies in Classrooms: Five Strategies, Including Prompts (March 17, 2023). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4391243 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4391243 “This paper provides guidance for using AI to quickly and easily implement evidence-based teaching strategies that instructors can integrate into their teaching. We discuss five teaching strategies… Continue Reading
Amazon’s European chokehold
SOMO Report. Amazon’s European chokehold, June 14, 2023: “Independent sellers and the economy under Amazon’s monopoly power. This research reveals the immense market power of Amazon in Europe and the revenue it derives from it. In most of Europe’s biggest economies, Amazon is the main route for independent businesses to access online shoppers. Amazon’s dominance… Continue Reading
People Sure Are Bad at Creating Passwords
Lifehacker: “Bad password habits are hard to break. In the olden days of the internet, many of us got used to repeating the same, easy-to-remember password on every site, so we’d never have to worry about getting locked out. And recent data suggests plenty of people have yet to learn better, even if the era… Continue Reading
Freedom of speech and LGBT rights: Americans’ views of issues in Supreme Court case
“A majority of Americans think business owners should be able to refuse to provide services in situations where providing them may “suggest support for beliefs about lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT) issues” to which they have personal or religious objections, according to a new Pew Research Center survey. In earlier surveys, the public has… Continue Reading
Artificial Artificial Artificial Intelligence: Crowd Workers Widely Use Large Language Models for Text Production Tasks
Artificial Artificial Artificial Intelligence: Crowd Workers Widely Use Large Language Models for Text Production Tasks – Veniamin Veselovsky, Manoel Horta Ribeiro, Robert West 13 June 2023. “Large language models (LLMs) are remarkable data annotators. They can be used to generate high-fidelity supervised training data, as well as survey and experimental data. With the widespread adoption of… Continue Reading
