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Monthly Archives: May 2024

Extremist Militias Are Coordinating In More Than 100 Facebook Groups

Via Wired: Facebook Dangerous Individuals and Organizations List (Reproduced Snapshot Original Document (PDF) » [100 pages] Contributed by SooHee Cho (The Intercept). “This is a reproduction of an internal Facebook list used to regulate speech on company platforms. This snapshot of the list has been lightly edited for clarity. Notes associated with the entries were… Continue Reading

ChatGPT in higher education – a synthesis of the literature and a future research agenda

Bhullar, P.S., Joshi, M. & Chugh, R. ChatGPT in higher education – a synthesis of the literature and a future research agenda. Educ Inf Technol (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-024-12723-x- “ChatGPT has emerged as a significant subject of research and exploration, casting a critical spotlight on teaching and learning practices in the higher education domain. This study examines… Continue Reading

Microsoft bans US police departments from using enterprise AI tool for facial recognition

TechCrunch: “Microsoft has reaffirmed its ban on U.S. police departments from using generative AI for facial recognition through Azure OpenAI Service, the company’s fully managed, enterprise-focused wrapper around OpenAI tech. Language added Wednesday to the terms of service for Azure OpenAI Service more obviously prohibits integrations with Azure OpenAI Service from being used “by or… Continue Reading

Would You Still Use Google if It Didn’t Pay Apple $20 Billion to Get on Your iPhone?

Wired [unpaywalled]- “A US judge who will decide Google’s fate in a historic antitrust trial suggested it was “odd” for the company to say it has the best search engine but also pay Apple billions to lock out rivals…Central to the government’s case against Google is the over $20 billion it says that Google pays… Continue Reading

How to make a map of smell

Aeon: “In recent years, however, things have changed dramatically, and understanding what one might call ‘the geometry of smell’ is a field that now enlists task forces of neuroscientists working together with mathematically trained theorists and artificial intelligence (AI) experts. While we’re notoriously bad at intuiting how our minds organise phenomena like colours and smells,… Continue Reading

UK first country to outlaw easily guessable default passwords

TechSpot: “Why it matters: No matter how many hacks we see that are perpetrated via unchanged, weak default passwords on devices, manufacturers continue to use the likes of “password” and “admin” for login credentials. That’s no longer going to be the case in the UK, which has become the first country in the world to… Continue Reading

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

Microsoft is changing how you log in to your accounts

Washington Post [unpaywalled]: “As passwords slowly go extinct, Microsoft is introducing another way to log in to your consumer account. The company said Thursday that users logging in to Microsoft 365 workplace software, Copilot, Xbox and Skype can now use “passkeys” rather than traditional passwords or an authenticator app. That means whatever biometric authentication (such… Continue Reading

Algorithmic Judicial Ethics

Swisher, Keith, Algorithmic Judicial Ethics (April 23, 2024). Wisconsin Law Review, Forthcoming 2024, Arizona Legal Studies Discussion Paper 24-19, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4803796 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4803796 – “Judges have a brand new bag—an algorithmic accessory in criminal adjudication. It scores criminal defendants, aiming to inform judges which defendants are likely reoffenders or flight risks and which… Continue Reading

The Battle for Attention

The New Yorker [unpaywalled] – “How do we hold on to what matters in a distracted age?Last year, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development reported a huge ten-year decline in reading, math, and science performance among fifteen-year-olds globally, a third of whom cited digital distraction as an issue. Clinical presentations of attention problems have… 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