John Mateer – Medium: “You’re browsing the internet without a care in the world — why shouldn’t you? You’re internet savvy, after all. You take your privacy seriously. That’s why you pay $20 a month for a rotating VPN. Surfshark, NordVPN, Google One — ever heard of them? You’re ahead of the game. But you didn’t… Continue Reading
Accurate, Focused Research on Law, Technology and Knowledge Discovery Since 2002
Monthly Archives: November 2024
Trump’s criminal conviction won’t stop him from getting security clearance as president
Via LLRX – Trump’s criminal conviction won’t stop him from getting security clearance as president – Law professor Dakota Rudesill explains that because Trump was elected to a second term, he will again have expansive access to classified information and control over it as of noon on Jan. 20, 2025, when his term begins. He will also… Continue Reading
Congress should designate an entity to oversee data security, GAO says
Fedscoop: “Federal agencies may need to rethink how they handle individuals’ personal data to protect their civil rights and civil liberties, a congressional watchdog said in a new report Tuesday. Without federal guidance governing the protection of the public’s civil rights and liberties, agencies have pursued a patchwork system of policies tied to the collection,… Continue Reading
NASA satellites reveal abrupt drop in global freshwater levels
PHYS.org: “An international team of scientists using observations from NASA-German satellites found evidence that Earth’s total amount of freshwater dropped abruptly starting in May 2014 and has remained low ever since. Reporting in Surveys in Geophysics, the researchers suggested the shift could indicate Earth’s continents have entered a persistently drier phase. From 2015 through 2023,… Continue Reading
Curious People Lead the Way in Catching New Invasive Species
Entomology Today [h/t Barclay Walsh]: “Early detection is critical to the eradication and management of invasive species, and curious members of the public play a key role by sharing observations on platforms such as iNaturalist. Integrating these sightings from a bug-curious public into ongoing biosecurity surveillance is an increasingly valuable approach for invasive species management.… Continue Reading
Can You Delete an Amazon Order From Your History?
How to Geek: “…The short answer is that you can’t completely delete an order from your history. The only option is to archive, which is Amazon’s way of allowing you to hide an order from your main order history. However, even when archived, the order remains in Amazon’s system (linked to your account), and it… Continue Reading
The Death of Search
The Atlantic unpaywalled – AI is transforming how billions navigate the web. A lot will be lost in the process. “…Although ChatGPT and Perplexity and Google AI Overviews cite their sources with (small) footnotes or bars to click on, not clicking on those links is the entire point. OpenAI, in its announcement of its new… Continue Reading
visprex – visualise your CSV files in seconds
Visprex is a lightweight data visualisation tool that helps you speed up your statistical modelling and analytics workflows. Visualise your CSV files in seconds without sending your data anywhere. The main high-level features include: Quick You can visualise your data in seconds to quickly build an intuition on your dataset No need for referring to… Continue Reading
Behold a Digital Restoration of 655 Plates of Roses & Lilies by Pierre-Joseph Redouté
Open Culture – The Greatest Botanical Illustrator of All Time: “Pierre-Joseph Redouté made his name by painting flowers, an achievement impossible without a meticulousness that exceeds all bounds of normality. He published his three-volume collection Les Roses and his eight-volume collection Les Liliacées between 1802 and 1824, and a glance at their pages today vividly suggests the… Continue Reading
20 things you didn’t know about Google Scholar
Google Blog: “To celebrate 20 years of Google Scholar, we’re sharing some fun facts about the go-to resource for researchers worldwide. …some features available on Scholar Review a paper efficiently and effectively with AI outlines. We recently added AI outlines to Scholar PDF Reader to help you read papers both quickly and in depth. PDF… Continue Reading
US Patent and Trademark Office Banned Staff From Using Generative AI
Wired – [unpaywalled] “The US Patent and Trademark Office banned the use of generative artificial intelligence for any purpose last year, citing security concerns with the technology as well as the propensity of some tools to exhibit “bias, unpredictability, and malicious behavior,” according to an April 2023 internal guidance memo obtained by WIRED through a… Continue Reading
The rise of Bluesky, and the splintering of social
MIT Technology Review: “..Last year, we put “Twitter killers” on our list of 10 breakthrough technologies. But the breakthrough technology wasn’t the rise of one service or the decline of another. It was decentralization. At the time, I wrote: “Decentralized, or federated, social media allows for communication across independently hosted servers or platforms, using networking… Continue Reading
