Beloved duo Wallace & Gromit returned to our screens at Christmas, 34 years after their first appearance, in their second feature-length film, Vengeance Most Fowl (Fanfare thread). Group blog (-slash-arts-magazine) It’s Nice That recently interviewed creator and director Nick Park, co-director Merlin Crossingham and supervising animator Will Becher about the plasticine pair’s legacy and creating… Continue Reading
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Category Archives: Education
FOIA Fellows as Freedom Fighters
Jack Wroldsen, FOIA Fellows as Freedom Fighters: An Independent and Privately Funded FOIA Commission of Rotating Professionals (Oct. 31, 2024). 108 Marquette L. Rev. (forthcoming 2025), available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=5043146 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.5043146. “The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) is a hallmark of U.S. democracy, designed as an outsider element that foists transparency on a government… Continue Reading
In ‘a mass erasure of heritage,’ numerous historic landmarks lost in L.A.
LA Times providing free access to updates on the fires – There have been at least 24 deaths and more than 12,000 structures damaged or destroyed in the L.A.-area fires. Cal Fire reported the Palisades, Eaton, Kenneth and Hurst fires had consumed more than 62 square miles, an area larger than San Francisco. The Palisades… Continue Reading
The Depths of Wikipedians
Asterisk Interview with Annie Rauwerda – The Depths of Wikipedians – Asterisk: You’re famous for the Depths of Wikipedia account, where you share factoids from some of the most arcane, interesting, and surprising pages on Wikipedia. But you’re also now a part of the broader Wikipedia community. How did you first get interested in the… Continue Reading
What the data says about federal workers
Pew Research Center – “President-elect Donald Trump has focused much attention on shrinking the size and scope of the federal government for his second administration. Most notably, Trump has appointed tech mogul Elon Musk and GOP-primary-rival-turned-ally Vivek Ramaswamy to lead an advisory task force dubbed the “Department of Government Efficiency.” Musk and Ramaswamy have said… Continue Reading
The State of Democracy, January 2025
Marist Poll: “While more than seven in ten Americans say the issues that divide the country pose a serious threat to the nation’s democracy, there has been a steep decline in the proportion of Americans who have this view. In fact, many Americans think most of the key components to the U.S. democracy are working… Continue Reading
Is prompt engineering a ‘fad’ hindering AI progress?
ZDNet: “A principal scientist at Google DeepMind thinks prompting is the wrong user interface for generative AI, not to mention bad for AI researchers. Here’s why…Motivated by the belief that “a well-crafted prompt is essential for obtaining accurate and relevant outputs from LLMs,” aggressive AI users — such as ride-sharing service Uber — have created… Continue Reading
Suspected Undeclared Use of Artificial Intelligence in the Academic Literature
Suspected Undeclared Use of Artificial Intelligence in the Academic Literature. An Analysis of the Academ-AI Dataset. Alex Glynn, MA, Kornhauser Health Sciences Library, University of Louisville, Louisville, KY. November 26, 2024. “Since generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT became widely available, researchers have used them in the writing process. The consensus of… Continue Reading
US Cyber Trust Mark launches as the Energy Star of smart home security
The Verge: “Consumers shopping for new smart home devices will soon be able to look for the official stamp of trust from the US government: the US Cyber Trust Mark. Similar to how an Energy Star label on home appliances denotes a certain level of energy efficiency, the Cyber Trust Mark is meant to be… Continue Reading
On The Fragility of Our Knowledge Base
JSTOR Daily: “Historian Glenn D. Tieffert shows how state interests in the People’s Republic of China can be protected by editing online databases and collections. Digital databases are vulnerable to authoritarian regimes. In fact, argues historian Glenn D. Tiffert, “no corner of the knowledge economy lies beyond their reach.” “Digital platforms offer [censors] dynamic, fine-grained… Continue Reading
Science paper piracy site Sci-Hub shares lots of retracted papers
Ars Technica: “85 percent of invalid papers continue to be shared after they’ve been retracted. Keeping track of when a paper has been retracted can be a challenge. Most scientific literature is published in for-profit journals that rely on subscriptions and paywalls to turn a profit. But that trend has been shifting as various governments… Continue Reading
Things we learned about LLMs in 2024
Simon Willison’s Weblog – “A lot has happened in the world of Large Language Models over the course of 2024. Here’s a review of things we figured out about the field in the past twelve months, plus my attempt at identifying key themes and pivotal moments.” A lot has happened in the world of Large… Continue Reading
