Practical Betterments: Sick and tired of ads? Blocking ads on your smart TV might be right for you! Warning: blocking ads and tracking may result in saved time, more enjoyment of your life, increased privacy, a slightly lower electricity bill and not memorizing the side effects of erectile dysfunction medication by heart. To block ads… Continue Reading
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Category Archives: E-Commerce
The chatbot optimisation game: can we trust AI web searches?
The Guardian -“…Looking into the sort of evidence that large language models (LLMs, the engines on which chatbots are built) find most convincing, three computer science researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, found current chatbots overrely on the superficial relevance of information. They tend to prioritise text that includes pertinent technical language or is… Continue Reading
Introducing ChatGPT search
OpenAI: “ChatGPT can now search the web in a much better way than before. You can get fast, timely answers with links to relevant web sources, which you would have previously needed to go to a search engine for. This blends the benefits of a natural language interface with the value of up-to-date sports scores,… Continue Reading
Exploiting Meta’s Weaknesses, Deceptive Political Ads Thrived on Facebook and Instagram in Run-Up to Election
ProPublica: Reporting Highlights Deceptive Political Ads: Eight deceptive advertising networks have placed over 160,000 election and social issues ads across more than 340 Facebook pages in English and Spanish. Harmed Users: Some of the people who clicked on ads were unwittingly signed up for monthly credit card charges or lost health coverage, among other consequences.… Continue Reading
Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, October 26, 2024
Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, October 26, 2024 – 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 increasingly complex and… Continue Reading
The Boomer Stuff Avalanche
Business Insider ungated – “Millennials are about to be crushed by all the junk their parents accumulated…In some ways, this is a timeless problem — every generation accumulates things, and younger generations rebel against older generations’ tastes. But the sheer size of the current problem is unprecedented given that baby boomers are an extra-materialistic breed.… Continue Reading
15 Best Amazon Alternatives For Ethical Online Shopping
goodgoodgood [June 2022] Amazon, the company that catapulted founder Jeff Bezos to billionaire status (and to the edge of space), has long been touted as environmentally unfriendly; the company emits the same level of carbon emissions as the country of Norway, according to a report released by Amazon in 2019. Its impact on the environment,… Continue Reading
VISA Biannual Threat Report Fall 2024
This report provides an overview of the top payments ecosystem threats within the past six-month period (January – June 2024) as identified by Visa Payment Fraud Disruption (PFD). In the December 2023 Biannual Report, Visa PFD noted an interesting shift in threat actors’ organization, access to tools, and target choice, with threat actors increasing in… Continue Reading
Anthropic’s new AI model can control your PC
TechCrunch: “In a pitch to investors last spring, Anthropic said it intended to build AI to power virtual assistants that could perform research, answer emails, and handle other back-office jobs on their own. The company referred to this as a “next-gen algorithm for AI self-teaching” — one it believed that could, if all goes according… Continue Reading
Musk and the federal government
Via Next Draft: What’s in it for Musk (and a handful of other billionaires funding the entire Trump operation)? Well, let’s narrow the answer down to this: Everything. Franklin Foer in The Atlantic( Gift Article): What Elon Musk Really Wants. “Many other titans of Silicon Valley have tethered themselves to Trump. But Musk is the… Continue Reading
ReportFraud.ftc.gov
Protect your community by reporting fraud, scams, and bad business practices The power of ReportFraud.ftc.gov Your report is shared with more than 2,800 law enforcers. We can’t resolve your individual report, but we use reports to investigate and bring cases against fraud, scams, and bad business practices Start your report now Continue Reading
How to find helpful content in a sea of made-for-Google BS
HouseFresh: “Uncovering the tactics used by big media content farms, SEO pattern makers, content thieves and AI slop creators to fool Google’s enshittified algorithm (so you don’t fall for them, too). At the beginning of 2024, we said Google was killing independent sites with its bias towards established media outlets, even in cases where these… Continue Reading
