As the southeastern United States reels from the impact of two historic hurricanes, a large amount of disinformation about nonexistent weather manipulation technology is spreading across the internet, particularly on social media platforms. Below, NOAA identifies some of the inaccurate claims circulating online and provides science-based facts and information in response. Continue Reading
Accurate, Focused Research on Law, Technology and Knowledge Discovery Since 2002
Monthly Archives: October 2024
Online Talk About ‘Civil War’ Could Inspire Real-World Violence, DHS Warns Cops
Wired [unpaywalled]: “The agency also cautioned that it’s unable to get a grasp on the full scale of the threat, due to extremists increasingly using encrypted chat tools…Last month, the agency’s intelligence office emphasized in a report that “perceptions of voter fraud” had risen to become a primary “trigger” for the “mobilization to violence.” This… Continue Reading
The National Security Case for Public AI
Vanderbilt Policy Accelerator: In a recent op-ed in the Washington Post, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman posed a simple but striking question: “Who will control the future of AI?” Altman frames the choice as between two futures: “Will it be one in which the United States and allied nations advance a global AI that spreads the… Continue Reading
Billionaire Blowback on Housing and The American Housing Crisis: A Theft, Not a Shortage
How concentrated wealth disrupts housing markets and worsens the housing affordability crisis. By Chuck Collins, Omar Ocampo, Amee Chew – Across the United States, communities are facing an acute housing affordability crisis. Rents and homelessness are rising while home ownership feels increasingly out of reach for millions. What’s driving that crisis? In a word, inequality.… Continue Reading
Inside US Government-Bought Tool That Can Track Phones at Abortion Clinics
404 Media: “On a computer screen a map shows the movements of smartphones around the globe. Zooming into an abortion clinic in the south of the United States, the online tool shows more than 700 red dots over the clinic itself, each representing a phone, and by extension, a person. The tool, called Locate X and… Continue Reading
Google Scholar is not broken (yet) but there are alternatives
London School of Economics: “…Google Scholar has advantages over traditional academic databases like Scopus and Web of Science: it’s free to use, requires no log in for searching, and has more comprehensive coverage, especially of non-journal sources such as books and theses. These benefits are particularly important for unaffiliated scholars without institutional access to resources,… Continue Reading
National Security Agency Mobile Device Best Practices
NSA Mobile Device Best Practices report offers tips to thwart hackers and attackers from assaulting your mobile device. One method is as simple as turning your phone off and on. Continue Reading
SBA disaster assistance resources
Data is Plural: “Following a declared disaster,” the US Small Business Administration offers “disaster assistance in the form of low-interest, long-term disaster loans for damages not covered by insurance or other recoveries to businesses of all sizes, private nonprofit organizations, as well as homeowners and renters.” The SBA publishes anonymized data about each such loan… Continue Reading
Anthropic’s new AI model can control your PC
TechCrunch: “In a pitch to investors last spring, Anthropic said it intended to build AI to power virtual assistants that could perform research, answer emails, and handle other back-office jobs on their own. The company referred to this as a “next-gen algorithm for AI self-teaching” — one it believed that could, if all goes according… Continue Reading
How to Actually Understand What You’re Buying on the Healthcare Exchange
Lifehacker: “I’m convinced that the luckiest people in America are those who have a decent health insurance plan paid for by their employer—but just one, so there’s nothing to choose. For the rest of us, each November’s open enrollment period starts anew the painful process of choosing the least worst plan offered by your employer.… Continue Reading
How Scientists Started to Decode Birdsong
The New Yorker – Language is said to make us human. What if birds talk, too? – no unpaywalled access so in lieu of please see this extensive excerpt and analysis via UPenn Language Log – Birdtalk: “Of course, we’ve been through the business of animal communication countless times on Language Log, but where this… Continue Reading
What’s In a Lie? On the Different Ways Politicians Mislead the Public
Lit Hub: “…Today, there’s still a range of opinions about using the word. Glenn Kessler, the Washington Post Fact Checker, uses it broadly to refer to Trump’s “election lies” or “the big lie.” FactCheck.org doesn’t use it. But maybe we’ve been too cautious. A 2018 study by researcher Paul Mena found a disconnect between journalists… Continue Reading
