The Record: “The revelation earlier this year that General Motors had been selling driver behavior patterns to data brokers — who in turn packaged and resold it to insurers — has led at least one of two major data brokers to shut down its related product. That data broker, Verisk, disclosed last month that it… Continue Reading
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Monthly Archives: June 2024
What Animal Studies Are Revealing About Their Minds and Ours
TIME – “…The last few months alone have been something of a boom time for research into the intelligence and behavior of animals. German researchers discovered a sort of pre-verbal stage in finches—similar to the babbling stage in humans—that leads to their becoming fluent in song. Studies in Sweden and Vienna explored the role of… Continue Reading
Google sued by top textbook publishers over ads for pirated e-books
XM: “June 5 (Reuters) – Google was hit with a lawsuit on Wednesday by educational publishers Cengage, Macmillan Learning, McGraw Hill and Elsevier accusing the tech giant of promoting pirate copies of their textbooks. The publishers told the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York that Google has ignored thousands of copyright-infringement… Continue Reading
XScreenSaver
“a collection of free screen savers for X11, macOS, iOS and Android. by Jamie Zawinski and many others. XScreenSaver for Android is… a set of screen savers and live wallpapers. That’s it. It draws pretty pictures on your screen. And it’s free. That’s the whole deal. But in their wisdom, Google — the most rapacious… Continue Reading
The One-Click Economy
The American Prospect: “You’d think that having subscriptions to three online fitness programs would make me the healthiest person in the world. I have: (1) a Zumba subscription, because until recently, I was an instructor at a local gym and I needed choreography to teach; (2) an Essentrics subscription, because it emphasizes dynamic stretching and… Continue Reading
How Americans Get News on TikTok, X, Facebook, Instagram
Pew – “X remains more of a news destination than other sites, but the vast majority of users on all four are seeing news-related content. Social media platforms are an important part of the American news diet: Half of U.S. adults say they get news at least sometimes from social media in general. But specific… Continue Reading
Catalyzing Crisis – A Primer on Artificial Intelligence, Catastrophes, and National Security
Center for New American Security: “The arrival of ChatGPT in November 2022 initiated both great excitement and fear around the world about the potential and risks of artificial intelligence (AI). In response, several AI labs, national governments, and international bodies have launched new research and policy efforts to mitigate large-scale AI risks. However, growing efforts… Continue Reading
Tracking AI-enabled Misinformation
“From unreliable AI-generated news outlets operating with little to no human oversight, to fabricated images produced by AI image generators, the rollout of generative artificial intelligence tools has been a boon to content farms and misinformation purveyors alike. This AI Tracking Center is intended to highlight the ways that generative AI has been deployed to… Continue Reading
New Dataset of State Interest Group Policy Positions in the United States
“Research on the activities and influence of interest groups in state legislatures faces a data problem: we are missing a comprehensive, systematic dataset of interest groups’ policy preferences on state legislation. We address this gap by introducing the Dataset on Policy Choice and Organizational Representation in the United States (CHORUS). This dataset compiles over 13… Continue Reading
Unlock your Digital Memories
“The main goal of the Web Design Museum project is the mapping of past trends in web design that have been prevalent on the Internet from the creation of the first web site in 1991 until the mid-2000s. Our goal is to preserve the creative legacy of millennium web designers for future generations, because Internet… Continue Reading
Common sunscreen myths, debunked
Vox: “Despite the extremely well-established science linking sun exposure to skin cancer, bad sun safety advice on social media simply will not stop — and a lot of people are buying it. In several recent surveys, between one and three out of every 10 adults believed a range of falsehoods about sunscreen and sun exposure;… Continue Reading
US Postpartum Mortality Rate 395 Percent Higher Than Other Wealthy Countries
TruthOut: “A new report from The Commonwealth Fund shows that, despite better outcomes since the pandemic, the United States “continues to have the highest rate of maternal deaths of any high-income nation” in the world. Around four out of five of these deaths “are likely preventable,” the report states, suggesting that the U.S. could save… Continue Reading
