Ars Technica: “Some of the most infamous so-called shadow libraries have increasingly faced legal pressure to either stop pirating books or risk being shut down or driven to the dark web. Among the biggest targets are Z-Library, which the US Department of Justice has charged with criminal copyright infringement, and Library Genesis (Libgen), which was… Continue Reading
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Monthly Archives: May 2024
Huge Google Search document leak reveals inner workings of ranking algorithm
Search Engine Land: “A trove of leaked Google documents has given us an unprecedented look inside Google Search and revealed some of the most important elements Google uses to rank content. What happened. Thousands of documents, which appear to come from Google’s internal Content API Warehouse, were released March 13 on Github by an automated… Continue Reading
Lawyers to Plastics Makers: Prepare for ‘Astronomical’ PFAS Lawsuits
The New York Times [no paywall]: “At an industry presentation about dangerous “forever chemicals,” lawyers predicted a wave of lawsuits that could dwarf asbestos litigation, audio from the event revealed…A wide swath of the chemicals, plastics and related industries are gearing up to fight a surge in litigation related to PFAS, or per- and polyfluoroalkyl… Continue Reading
Hackers Claim To Have Breached Ticketmaster Stealing Personal Data of 560M Users
HackRead: “ShinyHunters hacking group has claimed to have breached Ticketmaster, stealing the personal data of 560 million users. The 1.3 TB of stolen data also includes payment details. Learn more about this major cybersecurity incident and its implications. The notorious hacker group ShinyHunters has claimed to have breached the security of Ticketmaster-Live Nation, compromising the… Continue Reading
The Monopoly Case Against Ticketmaster, Explained
404 Media: “The Justice Department’s antitrust lawsuit against Live Nation/Ticketmaster isn’t really about high ticket prices, or ticket scalpers, or any individual offense. It is about a systematic vertical integration of the entire live music business, which has led to the company’s dominance over tickets, yes, but also over live music venues, artists’ tour booking,… Continue Reading
Corpus of Resolutions: UN Security Council
“The Corpus of Resolution: UN Security Council (CR-UNSC) collects and presents for the first time in human and machine-readable form all resolutions, drafts, and meeting records of the UN Security Council, including detailed metadata, as published by the UN Digital Library and revised by the authors. The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) is the most influential… Continue Reading
Satellite to probe mystery of clouds and climate
BBC: “A sophisticated joint European-Japanese satellite has launched to measure how clouds influence the climate. Some low-level clouds are known to cool the planet, others at high altitude will act as a blanket. The Earthcare mission will use a laser and a radar to probe the atmosphere to see precisely where the balance lies. It’s… Continue Reading
Air Now – Air Quality Index
“AirNow is your one-stop source for air quality data. Our recently redesigned site highlights air quality in your local area first, while still providing air quality information at state, national, and world views. A new interactive map even lets you zoom out to get the big picture or drill down to see data for a… Continue Reading
PayPal is building an ad network based on your Venmo data
The Verge: “PayPal is launching an advertising platform built on a trove of customer transaction data. The company’s new advertising business will encompass purchase information and customer spending habits from PayPal and its sister app Venmo, according to The Wall Street Journal. PayPal has brought on Mark Grether, the former vice president and general manager… Continue Reading
Google Researchers Say AI Now Leading Disinformation Vector
404 Media – and Are Severely Undercounting the Problem – “As an endless stream of entirely wrong and sometimes dangerous AI-generated answers from Google are going viral on social media, new research from Google researchers and several fact checking organizations have found that most image-based disinformation is now AI-generated, but the way researchers collected their… Continue Reading
Google won’t comment on a potentially massive leak of its search algorithm documentation
The Verge: “Google’s search algorithm is perhaps the most consequential system on the internet, dictating what sites live and die and what content on the web looks like. But how exactly Google ranks websites has long been a mystery, pieced together by journalists, researchers, and people working in search engine optimization. Now, an explosive leak… Continue Reading
Saving the American Chestnut
New York Intelligencer [no paywall]: “…In 1904, Herman W. Merkel, a forester at the Bronx Zoo, noticed chestnuts near the park’s perimeter were speckled with a strange orange fungus. Merkel called in William A. Murrill, a mycologist at the New York Botanical Garden, and the two men spent the next year identifying a fungus now… Continue Reading
