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Daily Archives: December 7, 2023

Mozilla Privacy Not Included Gift Guide

Mozilla Foundation: “Make smart choices to protect your privacy.  Search for products. Read expert reviews. Get tips and tricks. Dozens of products are reviewed, include Tips to Protect Yourself when using each product, What data does the company collect for each product, as well as the following explanations that document each evaluation:  A Little Creppy, Somewhat Creepy, Very Creepy, and Super Creepy.

Arab Funding of American Universities: Donors, Recipients and Impact

Arab Funding of American Universities: Donors, Recipients and Impact By Mitchell G. Bard, Ph.D. American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise (May 2023): “…Up until 2020, the DoE paid little attention to university compliance, and institutions did not report many of the gifts. That year the DoE began to investigate whether Yale and Harvard were complying with reporting requirements.… Continue Reading

Never-Reported Details of the Uvalde School Shooting

ProPublica: “Today, ProPublica, The Texas Tribune and the PBS series FRONTLINE are jointly publishing an in-depth examination of the response to the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, using a trove of raw materials from a state investigation whose findings have yet to be released. The records include investigative interviews with officers,… Continue Reading

The New York Times Claws Its Way Into the Future

Wired [read free] “…Sulzberger, like more than three dozen other executives and journalists I interviewed and shadowed at the Times, is working on the biggest strategic shift in the paper’s 165-year history, and he believes it will strengthen its bottom line, enhance the quality of its journalism, and secure a long and lasting future. The… Continue Reading

Facebook watches teens online as they prep for college

PopSci: “Picture a high school student who wants to go to college, likes to cheer on her school’s football team, and plays in a sport or two herself. .  One day after school, she signs up for an official ACT account so she can schedule her college entrance exam and see what score she gets after taking… Continue Reading

How Nations Are Losing a Global Race to Tackle A.I.’s Harms

The New York Times [read free]- “Alarmed by the power of artificial intelligence, Europe, the United States and others are trying to respond — but the technology is evolving more rapidly than their policies. When European Union leaders introduced a 125-page draft law to regulate artificial intelligence in April 2021, they hailed it as a… Continue Reading

Big Tech funds the very people who are supposed to hold it accountable

Washington Post [read free]: “Tech giants including Google and Facebook parent Meta have dramatically ramped up charitable giving to university campuses over the past several years — giving them influence over academics studying such critical topics as artificial intelligence, social media and disinformation. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg alone has donated money to more than 100… Continue Reading

Faculty report reveals average Yale College GPA, grade distributions by subject

Yale Daily News: “Yale College’s mean GPA was 3.70 for the 2022-23 academic year, and 78.97 percent of grades given to students were A’s or A-’s. The data, which show a sharp hike in grades coinciding with the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, come from a document presented at a November faculty meeting. According to… Continue Reading

ICANN Launches Service to Help With WHOIS Lookups

Krebs on Security: “…At the end of November 2023, ICANN launched the Registration Data Request Service (RDRS), which is designed as a one-stop shop to submit registration data requests to participating registrars. This video from ICANN walks through how the system works. Accredited registrars don’t have to participate, but ICANN is asking all registrars to… Continue Reading

Meta’s new AI image generator was trained on 1.1 billion Instagram and Facebook photos

ars technica: Meta’s new AI image generator was trained on 1.1 billion Instagram and Facebook photos: “On Wednesday, Meta released a free standalone AI image-generator website, “Imagine with Meta AI,” based on its Emu image-synthesis model. Meta used 1.1 billion publicly visible Facebook and Instagram images to train the AI model, which can render a… Continue Reading