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Monthly Archives: October 2023

Reading Between the Bars

PEN America Experts Report – Senior Manager, The Freewrite Project; Juliana Luna, Intern, The Freewrite Project. Published October 25, 2023. “…Carceral censorship is the most pervasive form of censorship in the United States. The Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) and the departments of corrections (DOCs) in all 50 states and the District of Columbia censor… Continue Reading

Google Image Search Will Now Show a Photo’s History

Wired: “The spread of misinformation is a massive problem online, and generative AI is only helping boost the creation of inauthentic or real-but-repurposed media. Even in the pre-generative-AI era, an image surfaced through a quick Google search might have been used out of context or attached to a less-than-reliable website. Google believes it has at… Continue Reading

Google paid a whopping $26.3 billion in 2021 to be the default search engine everywhere

The Verge: “The US v. Google antitrust trial is about many things, but more than anything, it’s about the power of defaults. Even if it’s easy to switch browsers or platforms or search engines, the one that appears when you turn it on matters a lot. Google obviously agrees and has paid a staggering amount… Continue Reading

 Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, October 29, 2023

Via LLRX – Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, October 29, 2023 – Privacy and cybersecurity issues impact every aspect of our lives – home, work, travel, education, finance, health and medical records – to name but a few. On a weekly basis Pete Weiss highlights articles and information that focus on the… Continue Reading

Free Digital Archive of Graphic Design: A Curated Collection of Design Treasures from Internet Archive

Open Cultures: “We’ve got a thing for creative problem solvers here at Open Culture. We also love a good community-spirited project. Graphic designer Valery Marier ticks both boxes with archives.design, a free graphic design archive that was born of her frustrations with online research at a time when Covid restrictions shuttered libraries and archives…Graphic design nerds,… Continue Reading

Data – Information is Beautiful

“We love data. And we love getting data good and tight and comprehensive. The technical term for that is “juicy”. Juicy data. In fact, 80% of the work involved in creating an infographic is data-gathering, shaping and checking. Making the data juicy. So here, naturally, is a big-ass spreadsheet of all our best data.” You… Continue Reading

The New Big Tech

The Atlantic [read free] – “A slate of four AI companies might soon rule Silicon Valley…Chatbots and their ilk are still in their early stages, but everything in the world of AI is already converging around just four companies. You could refer to them by the acronym GOMA: Google, OpenAI, Microsoft, and Anthropic. Shortly after… Continue Reading

Visit the Library From the Comfort of Your Own Phone

The New York Times: “Public libraries have lent e-books to patrons for more than 20 years, but many have widened their electronic offerings with digital audiobooks, magazines, comics, videos and other services, even before the pandemic helped shift collections online. If you are curious about what your local library can lend from its digital shelves… Continue Reading

What to Do If You’re Concerned About the 23andMe Breach

EFF: “In early October, a bad actor claimed they were selling account details from the genetic testing service, 23andMe, which included alleged data of one million users of Ashkenazi Jewish descent and another 100,000 users of Chinese descent. By mid-October this expanded out to another four million more general accounts. The data includes display name,… Continue Reading

The 2023 state of the climate report: Entering uncharted territory

The 2023 state of the climate report: Entering uncharted territory. BioScience, biad080, https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biad080 Published 24 October 2023. “Life on planet Earth is under siege. We are now in an uncharted territory. For several decades, scientists have consistently warned of a future marked by extreme climatic conditions because of escalating global temperatures caused by ongoing human… Continue Reading

Almost a Quarter of the World Feels Lonely

“Nearly one in four people worldwide — which translates into more than a billion people — feel very or fairly lonely, according to a recent Meta-Gallup survey of more than 140 countries. Notably, these numbers could be even higher. The survey represents approximately 77% of the world’s adults because it was not asked in the… Continue Reading