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Daily Archives: January 4, 2024

Delete your digital history from dozens of companies with this app

Washington Post: “Sick of companies grabbing and selling your address, birth date, location, online activity, dog food brand and even adult-film preferences? Oh boy, do I have some good news. A new iPhone and Android app called Permission Slip makes it super simple to order companies to delete your personal information and secrets. Trying it saved me about 76 hours of work telling Ticketmaster, United, AT&T, CVS and 35 other companies to knock it off. Did I mention Permission Slip is free? And it’s made by an organization you can trust: the nonprofit Consumer Reports. I had a few hiccups testing it, but I’m telling everyone I know to use it. This is the privacy app all those snooping companies don’t want you to know about…”

How to Reduce Your Exposure to Plastic in Food (and Everywhere Else)

Consumer Reports – “It’s nearly impossible to completely avoid bisphenols and phthalates. But several small, strategic shifts can help. Plasticizers—the most common of which are called phthalates—are used to make plastic more flexible and more durable. They’re so widely used that today, they show up inside almost all of us, right along with other chemicals… Continue Reading

All Science journals will now do an AI-powered check for image fraud

Ars Technica: “On Thursday [January 4, 2024], the research publisher Science announced that all of its journals will begin using commercial software that automates the process of detecting improperly manipulated images. The move comes many years into our awareness that the transition to digital data and publishing has made it comically easy to commit research… Continue Reading

How to Get a Job in the Age of AI, According to a Top LinkedIn Executive

Bloomberg [read free]: “Daniel Shapero has been at LinkedIn since 2008, when the Great Recession rocked the labor market. He’s since risen through the ranks to become the company’s chief operating officer, guiding the platform through significant strategic shifts. Now owned by Microsoft Corp., the professional networking site is taking on its next big transformation:… Continue Reading

Report: Thomas May Also Be Dodging Tax Bill With Failure to Report Gifts

The Lever – “If billionaires’ largesse was designed to keep the justice on the high court, experts say the money could be considered a taxable payment… Much of the public outcry over Thomas’ long history of undisclosed gifts has centered on whether the activities violate federal ethics laws. Lawmakers have also zeroed in on one… Continue Reading

White House for Sale: How Princes, Prime Ministers, and Premiers Paid Off President Trump

Staff Report Committee on Oversight and Accountability, Democratic Staff, Rep. Jamie Raskin, Ranking Member. U.S. House of Representatives, January 4, 2024 “Donald J. Trump’s businesses received at least $7.8 million from 20 foreign governments during his presidency, according to new documents released by House Democrats on Thursday that show how much he received from overseas… Continue Reading

Two years, 400 journalists and 50 climate experts

The Reuters Institute: Here’s what we learnt about how to report on climate change – “Since the Oxford Climate Journalism Network (OCJN) kicked off in January 2022, reporters, editors, photographers and fact-checkers alike have gathered week after week, talking to fellow reporters and to science and policy experts about how to understand the ways climate… Continue Reading

Do Users Write More Insecure Code with AI Assistants?

Neil Perry, Megha Srivastava, Deepak Kumar, and Dan Boneh. 2023. Do Users Write More Insecure Code with AI Assistants?. In Proceedings of the 2023 ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS ’23), November 26–30, 2023, Copenhagen, Denmark. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 16 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3576915.3623157 “We conducted the first user study examining how… Continue Reading