EnvironmentAmerica.org: “Well-designed single-use plastic bag bans have successfully reduced plastic bag use and associated litter and pollution. Use the Single-use Plastic Bag Ban Waste Reduction Calculator to estimate the impact where you live. Single-use plastic bags pollute communities with litter, degrade in the environment and harm marine life. The good news is that states and… Continue Reading
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Author Archives: Sabrina I. Pacifici
Authors Are Fighting Amazon’s Audible
Libro.FM Blog: “Amazon’s impact on the book industry is no secret to most readers. From taking business from independent bookshops—business they depend on, unlike Amazon—to limiting accessibility of audiobooks with Audible Exclusives, the company’s dominance threatens diversity of the publishing ecosystem. According to WordsRated, Amazon “controls between 50% and 80% of the book distribution in… Continue Reading
We Asked A.I. to Create the Joker. It Generated a Copyrighted Image
The New York Times: “When Reid Southen, a movie concept artist based in Michigan, tried an A.I. image generator for the first time, he was intrigued by its power to transform simple text prompts into images. But after he learned how A.I. systems were trained on other people’s artwork, his curiosity gave way to more… Continue Reading
Paying for news: What Google and Meta owe publishers
Vox EU CEPR: “…Our new research calculates what Meta and Google would owe US publishers under a fair payment for the use of their content, and we provide the methodology for calculating these payments so that others can replicate our work. We (conservatively) estimate that Facebook should provide an annual compensation of US$1.9 billion to… Continue Reading
GPT-4 Cheat Sheet: What Is GPT-4, and What Is it Capable Of?
Tech Republic: “GPT-4 is an artificial intelligence large language model system that can mimic human-like speech and reasoning. It does so by training on a vast library of existing human communication, from classic works of literature to large swaths of the internet. Artificial intelligence of this type builds on its training to predict what letter,… Continue Reading
Wyden Releases Documents Confirming the NSA Buys Americans’ Internet Browsing Records
“U.S. Senator Ron Wyden, D-Ore., released documents confirming the National Security Agency buys Americans’ internet records, which can reveal which websites they visit and what apps they use. In response to the revelation, today Wyden called on the administration to ensure intelligence agencies stop buying personal data from Americans that has been obtained illegally by… Continue Reading
We’ve Forgotten How to Use Computers
The Atlantic The mouse is sorely missed: “…Clicking, moving, dragging—these were elemental ways of interacting with machines, and also ways of understanding them. A mouse could burrow into folders and pull out data in its teeth. It could make you feel like you were crawling in there with the circuits. But that way of connecting… Continue Reading
GPO Completes the Law Library of Congress Historical Reports Records
“The U.S. Government Publishing Office’s (GPO’s) Library Technical Services (LTS) has completed the cataloging of the Law Library of Congress Historical Reports. GPO would like to thank the Law Library of Congress for their wonderful collaboration on this project. In April 2020, the Law Library of Congress and GPO began a multi-year project to catalog… Continue Reading
Save your Twitter Account
EFF:”…In documenting social movements we must remember social media is not an archive, and platforms will only store (and gate keep) user work insofar as it’s profitable, just as they only make it accessible to the public when it is profitable to do so. But when platforms fail, with them goes the history of everyday voices speaking to… Continue Reading
Elon Musk Is Spreading Election Misinformation
The New York Times – but X’s Fact Checkers Are Long Gone “Civil rights lawyers and Democrats are sounding alarms about Mr. Musk’s claims about voting. The Biden campaign called his posts “profoundly irresponsible.”…This month, Elon Musk, who has since bought Twitter and rebranded it X, echoed several of Mr. Trump’s claims about the American… Continue Reading
Cooked
“Cooked summarizes web pages into a short recipe version which you can save and read while cooking. Organizes your recipes automatically. Its a breeze to find your old favorites and share them with your friends. More than just a cookbook. Cooked understands your recipes and simplifies your everyday shopping and cooking. Smart shopping lists. Cooked… Continue Reading
Gigafact equips newsrooms to counter misinformation, protect the democratic process
“Online misinformation is rampant. At the same time, the supply of factual and well-sourced knowledge has never been greater nor easier to access. Gigafact’s goal is to empower credible sources to counter the unsupported claims that are undermining democratic society, and provide a process for rebuilding our factual foundations. We believe that fact checks published… Continue Reading
