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Category Archives: Economy

Brokewell: do not go broke from new banking malware

Threat Fabric: “Constant monitoring of the threat landscape allows us to spot new threats and actors early and take immediate action—evaluating the threat and preparing for it. Our Threat Intelligence shows that device takeover capabilities remain crucial for any modern banking malware family, and new players entering the landscape are no exception. In most cases,… Continue Reading

Cost of Living by County, 2023

Via Reddit: “Map created by me, an attempt to define cost of living tiers. People often say how they live in a HCOL, MCOL, LCOL area. Source for all data on cost of living dollar amounts by county, with methodology: https://www.epi.org/publication/family-budget-calculator-documentation/ To summarize, this cost of living calculation is for a “modest yet adequate standard… Continue Reading

Microsoft’s “responsible AI” chief worries about the open web

Washington Post: “…Natasha Crampton, Microsoft’s chief Responsible AI officer, spoke with The Technology 202 ahead of Microsoft’s release today of its first “Responsible AI Transparency Report.” The 39-page report, which the company is billing as the first of its kind from a major tech firm, details how Microsoft plans to keep its rapidly expanding stable… Continue Reading

Russia Clones Wikipedia, Censors It, Bans Original

404 Media: “Russia has replaced Wikipedia with a state-sponsored encyclopedia that is a clone of the original Russian Wikipedia but which conveniently has been edited to omit things that could cast the Russian government in poor light. Real Russian Wikipedia editors used to refer to the real Wikipedia as Ruwiki; the new one is called… Continue Reading

The reckless policies that helped fill our streets with ridiculously large cars

Vox – Dangerous, polluting SUVs and pickups took over America. Lawmakers are partly to blame. Cars, you might have noticed, have grown enormous. Low-slung station wagons are all but extinct on American roads, and even sedans have become an endangered species. (Ford, producer of the iconic Model T a century ago, no longer sells any… Continue Reading

Ai and Moderna

Noting this press release as it shines light into the foothold AI is gaining in major sectors, in this case, pharmaceuticals: “For over a decade, Moderna has been at the intersection of science, technology and health. Since our beginnings, we’ve leveraged the power of machine learning to support our mission to develop transformative mRNA medicines.… Continue Reading

Chatbot answers are all made up

MIT Technology Review: “This new tool helps you figure out which ones to trust. In many high-stakes situations, large language models are not worth the risk. Knowing which outputs to throw out might fix that. Large language models are famous for their ability to make things up—in fact, it’s what they’re best at. But their… Continue Reading

Spring 2024 Harvard Youth Poll

The Spring 2024 Harvard Youth Poll surveyed 2,010 young Americans between 18- and 29 years old nationwide, and was conducted between March 14-21, 2024. Top Issues – Inflation; Healthcare; Housing; Gun Violence – “A national poll released today by the Institute of Politics (IOP) at Harvard Kennedy School indicates that among 18-to-29-year-olds nationwide, more than… Continue Reading

Global study revealed world’s biggest known plastic polluters

Washington Post: “Every year, companies produce more than 400 million metric tons of plastic. Some of that plastic spills onto waterways or beaches, clogging streams or floating in huge gyres in the ocean. Some of it breaks down into tiny microplastics or nanoplastics that float in the air and enter human lungs, blood and organs.… Continue Reading

The Man Who Killed Google Search

Where’s Your Ed Act via Metafilter – “Edward Zitron has been reading all of google’s internal emails that have been released as evidence in the DOJ’s antitrust case against google.  Zitron concludes that Google Search died on February 5th, 2019. It was on that date at Google’s HQ evil lair an emergency meeting, aka a… Continue Reading

Global Public Procurement Dataset

Data is Plural: “The Global Public Procurement Dataset provides standardized data on 72 million government contracts in 42 countries. The dataset, constructed from official sources by the Budapest-based Government Transparency Institute, represents $17 trillion in total procurement. It begins in the 2000s for most of the countries and concludes in 2021. For each contract, it… Continue Reading