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Category Archives: Internet

How to survive the broligarchy: 20 lessons for the post-truth world

The Guardian – Carole Cadwalladr – In the wake of Trump’s unnerving appointees, the investigative journalist and veteran of the libel court offers [20] pointers on coping in an age of surveillance

Journalists are first, but everyone else is next. Trump has announced multibillion-dollar lawsuits against “the enemy camp”: newspapers and publishers. His proposed FBI director is on record as wanting to prosecute certain journalists. Journalists, publishers, writers, academics are always in the first wave. Doctors, teachers, accountants will be next. Authoritarianism is as predictable as a Swiss train. It’s already later than you think…”

What should journalists do when the facts don’t matter?

Via LLRX – What should journalists do when the facts don’t matter? – Most people agree that actual facts matter – in such activities as debate, discussion and reporting. Once facts are gathered, verified and distributed, informed decision-making can proceed in such important exercises as voting. But what happens when important, verified facts are published and… Continue Reading

How Google Spent 15 Years Creating a Culture of Concealment

The New York Times [free article] – “Trying to avoid antitrust suits, Google systematically told employees to destroy messages, avoid certain words and copy the lawyers as often as possible…How Google developed this distrustful culture was pieced together from hundreds of documents and exhibits, as well as witness testimony, in three antitrust trials against the… Continue Reading

What Is Browser Fingerprinting? Here’s Everything You Need to Know

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

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

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

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

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

America’s News Influencers

The creators and consumers in the world of news and information on social media – In the heat of the 2024 election, news influencers seemed to be everywhere. Both Republicans and Democrats credentialed content creators to cover their conventions – and encouraged influencers to share their political messages. Influencers also interviewed the candidates and held fundraisers… Continue Reading

DOJ Will Push Google to Sell Chrome to Break Search Monopoly

Bloomberg unpaywalled – “Top Justice Department antitrust officials have decided to ask a judge to force Alphabet Inc.’s Google to sell off its Chrome browser in what would be a historic crackdown on one of the biggest tech companies in the world. The department will ask the judge, who ruled in August that Google illegally… Continue Reading

The Death of Critical Thinking Will Kill Us Long Before AI

Joan Westenberg: “…In the bite-sized content and viral media age, too many of us have lost — or are losing — the focus and patience for lengthy, complex texts. We skim and scan instead of closely reading. Our attention spans have shrunk to mere seconds. While technology has enabled the wide dissemination of information, it has also fragmented our… Continue Reading