“Freedom House released its annual Freedom on the Net report. It marks the 14th consecutive year of declines in internet freedom around the world, and chronicles concerning government interventions in elections.” Around the world, voters have been forced to make major decisions about their future while navigating a censored, distorted, and unreliable information space. Continue Reading
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Category Archives: Internet
DittText
What is Diff Text? A simple diff checker tool to quickly find the difference between two blocks of text. What can it be used for? It can be used to compare changes with plain text, code, json, yaml, html, css, markdown, and more. What do the colors mean? Green means the text was added, red… Continue Reading
AI Detectors Falsely Accuse Students of Cheating With Big Consequences
Bloomberg: “About two-thirds of teachers report regularly using tools for detecting AI-generated content. At that scale, even tiny error rates can add up quickly…Since OpenAI’s ChatGPT brought generative AI to the mainstream almost two years ago, schools have raced to adapt to a changed landscape. Educators now rely on a growing crop of detection tools… Continue Reading
Startup Can Identify Deepfake Video In Real Time
Wired: “Real-time video deepfakes are a growing threat for governments, businesses, and individuals. Recently, the chairman of the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations mistakenly took a video call with someone pretending to be a Ukrainian official. An international engineering company lost millions of dollars earlier in 2024 when one employee was tricked by a… Continue Reading
How rational inference about authority debunking can curtail, sustain, or spread belief polarization
Setayesh Radkani, Marika Landau-Wells, Rebecca Saxe. How rational inference about authority debunking can curtail, sustain, or spread belief polarization. PNAS Nexus, 2024; 3 (10) DOI: 10.1093/pnasnexus/pgae393 In polarized societies, divided subgroups of people have different perspectives on a range of topics. Aiming to reduce polarization, authorities may use debunking to lend support to one perspective… Continue Reading
The Individualization of Responsibility – Masterclass in Deception
The Climate Historian: “…In the mid-20th century, as evidence mounted linking smoking to lung cancer, the tobacco industry didn’t just fight back—they mastered the art of deflection. Instead of outright denying the dangers, they funded research to stir doubt, muddying the scientific waters.In the 1950s, the Tobacco Institute launched its “health reassurance” campaigns. These campaigns… Continue Reading
WildChat: 1M ChatGPT Interaction Logs in the Wild
WildChat: 1M ChatGPT Interaction Logs in the Wild: “Chatbots such as GPT-4 and ChatGPT are now serving millions of users. Despite their widespread use, there remains a lack of public datasets showcasing how these tools are used by a population of users in practice. To bridge this gap, we offered free access to ChatGPT for… Continue Reading
You should be using an RSS reader
Pluralistic: “…RSS (one of those ancient internet acronyms with multiple definitions, including, but not limited to, “Really Simple Syndication”) is an invisible, automatic way for internet-connected systems to public “feeds.” For example, rather than reloading the Wired homepage every day and trying to figure out which stories are new (their layout makes this very hard… Continue Reading
Hearing Things is a new home for independent music journalism.
Hearing Things: “The music industry is once again at a crossroads. Streaming was supposed to democratize music, making it more equitable for all. That didn’t happen. Now the most famous artists are dominating the industry like never before, while everyone else is scrounging for pennies. What’s left of music media is chasing those same huge… Continue Reading
How social media distorts perceptions of norms
Claire E. Robertson, Kareena S. del Rosario, Jay J. Van Bavel, Inside the funhouse mirror factory: How social media distorts perceptions of norms, Current Opinion in Psychology, Volume 60, 2024, 101918, ISSN 2352-250X, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2024.101918. “The current paper explains how modern technology interacts with human psychology to create a funhouse mirror version of social norms. We… Continue Reading
Law and Technological Innovations: Three Reasons to Pause
Smith, Michael L., (September 04, 2024). 12 Belmont Law Review (Forthcoming 2025), Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4946479 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4946479 – “Faced with optimistic accounts of technological innovations, businesses, law firms, and governments face pressure to rush into adopting these technologies and enjoying the increased efficiency, reduced costs, and other benefits that are promised. This essay sets… Continue Reading
Guide to effective searching on ebay
Thread by derek guy via Twitter – I want to show you how to get some deals on eBay. Since I write about menswear, this thread will be focused on men’s clothing and accessories. But my guess is that you can apply these tricks to other categories…So my first tip is that you should learn… Continue Reading
