“The Dignity Index scores distinct phrases along an eight-point scale from contempt to dignity. Lower scores (1-4) reflect divisive language while higher scores (5-8) reflect language grounded in dignity. In its pilot season, a trained group of students supported by the University of Utah’s Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute and the Hinckley Institute of Politics… Continue Reading
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Author Archives: Sabrina I. Pacifici
Fake Funeral Live Stream Scams Are All Over Facebook
404 Media [free reg req’d]: “Facebook is awash with scams that direct visitors to fake live streams of funeral services, preying on relatives and friends of the deceased when they might be at their most vulnerable, 404 Media has found. The scams involve pulling details of real deceased people from legitimate funeral services pages and… Continue Reading
This Tiny Website Is Google’s First Line of Defense in the Patent Wars
Wired: “TDCommons is a free space for inventors to lay claim to breakthroughs without having to file a patent. Why is it so off the radar? A trio of Google engineers recently came up with a futuristic way to help anyone who stumbles through presentations on video calls. They propose that when algorithms detect a… Continue Reading
Old’aVista
Remember the search engine Altavista? (I sure do). Via Wikipedia: “AltaVista was a Web search engine established in 1995. It became one of the most-used early search engines, but lost ground to Google and was purchased by Yahoo! in 2003, which retained the brand, but based all AltaVista searches on its own search engine. On… Continue Reading
Misleading Food Labels
Consumer Reports – “When it comes to filling your grocery cart with the healthiest foods, careful label reading is critical. Yet even the savviest shoppers can be fooled by some of the claims found on the front of food packages. And that is intentional. “If the marketing is done well, it slips through the radar… Continue Reading
Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, February 17, 2024
Via LLRX – Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, February 17, 2024 -Privacy and cybersecurity issues impact every aspect of our lives – home, work, travel, education, finance, health and medical records – to name but a few. On a weekly basis Pete Weiss highlights articles and information that focus on the… Continue Reading
Meet Goody-2, the AI too ethical to discuss literally anything
TechCrunch: “Every company or organization putting out an AI model has to make a decision on what, if any, boundaries to set on what it will and won’t discuss. Goody-2 takes this quest for ethics to an extreme by declining to talk about anything whatsoever. The chatbot is clearly a satire of what some perceive… Continue Reading
How to discover weird and cool places near you
PopSci: “You might think there’s nothing interesting where you live. You’re probably wrong. Every place on Earth has an interesting story to tell—the hard part is finding them. There are all kinds of apps and websites that recommend activities to tourists, and there’s a good chance that your town hosts at least some tourists. Why… Continue Reading
Charted: The Approval Ratings of World Leaders in 2024
The Approval Ratings of World Leaders in 2024. “What are the approval ratings of world leaders in 2024? Morning Consult set out to answer the question, surveying people from 15 major countries around the world. Figures in the dataset are rounded for simplicity. Data was collected from December 13, 2023 to January 2, 2024. Approval… Continue Reading
Why Charging Your Gadgets Over 80% Is Such a Bad Idea
IFixIt: “Charging your phone’s battery to 100% is drastically shortening its useful life. But the fix is easy, and while auto companies have known about this and mitigated its consequences for some time, now most major smartphone brands—including Apple, Samsung, and Google—are finally jumping on board. When we think about battery longevity, we think about… Continue Reading
Mapping Soot and Smog Pollution in the United States
Earth Justice: “Under the Clean Air Act, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency must set standards that protect public health from common air pollutants, such as fine particulate matter (also known as soot) and ground-level ozone (also known as smog). On Feb. 7, the EPA strengthened the annual particulate matter standard from 12 micrograms per cubic meter… Continue Reading
‘Humanity’s remaining timeline?
The Guardian – It looks more like five years than 50’: meet the neo-luddites warning of an AI apocalypse: “It’s January. I have set out to meet and talk to a small but growing band of luddites, doomsayers, disruptors and other AI-era sceptics who see only the bad in the way our spyware-steeped, infinitely doomscrolling… Continue Reading
