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Monthly Archives: November 2023

The best ebook reader to buy right now

The Verge: “…I’ve been using ebook readers for nearly a decade, and I’ve gone hands-on with dozens, from the Kindle Paperwhite to lesser-known rivals like the Pocketbook Era. Whether you want something your kid can throw against the wall or a waterproof, warm-glow Kindle that won’t ruin your spa ambiance, these are the best ebook… Continue Reading

Microsoft lays hands on login data: Beware of the new Outlook

“The free new Outlook replaces Mail in Windows, and later also the classic Outlook. It sends secret credentials to Microsoft servers. (This is a translation of this german article.) The new Outlook is not what it seems at first glance: a replacement for Microsoft Office Outlook – at least not yet. What it definitely is,… Continue Reading

The Fifth National Climate Assessment

“The Fifth National Climate Assessment is the US Government’s preeminent report on climate change impacts, risks, and responses. It is a congressionally mandated interagency effort that provides the scientific foundation to support informed decision-making across the United States. The more the planet warms, the greater the impacts. Without rapid and deep reductions in global greenhouse… Continue Reading

Worried about AI hijacking your voice for a deepfake? This tool could help

NPR: “Artificial intelligence has gotten so good at mimicking people’s physical looks and voices that it can be hard to tell if they’re real or fake. Roughly half of the respondents in two newly-released AI surveys — from Northeastern University and Voicebot.ai and Pindrop — said they couldn’t distinguish between synthetic and human-generated content. This… Continue Reading

Deepfakes and scientific knowledge dissemination

Doss, C., Mondschein, J., Shu, D. et al. Deepfakes and scientific knowledge dissemination. Sci Rep 13, 13429 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-39944-3 “Science misinformation on topics ranging from climate change to vaccines have significant public policy repercussions. Artificial intelligence-based methods of altering videos and photos (deepfakes) lower the barriers to the mass creation and dissemination of realistic, manipulated… Continue Reading

Latest US climate assessment shows the extreme toll taken by climate change

The Verge: “Climate disasters are costing the US billions of dollars a year, and the damage isn’t spread out evenly, according to a new national climate assessment. The assessment, produced about every four years, lays out the toll climate change is taking across every region in the United States. This is the fifth one —… Continue Reading

Israel-Gaza crisis: X fails to remove 98% of posts reported by the CCDH for hate and extremism

Center for Countering Digital Hate: “Elon Musk’s X (previously Twitter) continues to host the overwhelming majority of a sample of posts that breach platform rules for promoting antisemitism, Islamophobia, anti-Palestinian hate and other hateful rhetoric in the wake of the Israel-Gaza crisis, the Center for Countering Digital Hate has found. The CCDH’s study, published Tuesday… Continue Reading

Companies With Flexible Remote Work Policies Outperform On Revenue Growth

Forbes: “…A new report released Tuesday by Scoop, a hybrid work management startup that also compiles the data set Flex Index, includes an analysis of remote work policies and revenue growth at 554 public companies done in partnership with the Boston Consulting Group. It found that the average public company that gives employees choice over… Continue Reading

How Much Your Social Media Profile Data Is Worth on the Dark Web

MakeUseOf: “Key Takeaways Hackers often sell stolen data from social media accounts on the dark web, making it a valuable marketplace for criminals. LinkedIn accounts have the highest value on the dark web due to the professional information they contain, while Reddit accounts are the least valuable. To protect your social media profile data from… Continue Reading

Supreme Court issues Code of Conduct

Supreme Court, November 13, 2023 [15 page PDF]: “The undersigned Justices are promulgating this Code of Conduct [there is no accountability nor enforcement mechanism] to set out succinctly and gather in one place the ethics rules and principles that guide the conduct of the Members of the Court. For the most part these rules and… Continue Reading