Gerlich, M. AI Tools in Society: Impacts on Cognitive Offloading and the Future of Critical Thinking. Societies 2025, 15, 6. https://doi.org/10.3390/soc15010006. Published: 3 January 2025. “The proliferation of artificial intelligence (AI) tools has transformed numerous aspects of daily life, yet its impact on critical thinking remains underexplored. This study investigates the relationship between AI tool… Continue Reading
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Category Archives: Legal Research
What Jack Smith Didn’t Say about the January 6 Investigation
Follow up to Special Counsel Report Says Trump Would Have Been Convicted in Election Case – critical facts and extensive commentary documentation via Emptywheel – “As part of Kyle Cheney and Josh Gerstein’s summary of the Jack Smith report, they argued that “Smith [came] to Garland’s defense regarding his conduct of the January 6 investigation… Continue Reading
Big 3 Pharmacy Benefit Manager charging enormous markups on dozens of lifesaving drugs
“The Federal Trade Commission today published a second interim staff report on the prescription drug middleman industry, which focuses on pharmacy benefit managers’ (PBMs) influence over specialty generic drugs, including significant price markups by PBMs for cancer, HIV, and a variety of other critical drugs. Staff’s latest report found that the ‘Big 3 PBMs’—Caremark Rx,… Continue Reading
New NOAA dataset to help improve flood mitigation tools, flood-risk assessment
“The first modeled, historical water level and wave dataset for the Atlantic, Caribbean and Gulf coasts was released today by NOAA’s National Ocean Service (NOS). This comprehensive dataset — known as Coastal Ocean Reanalysis (CORA) — advances NOAA’s ability to better serve the nation’s coastal communities and lays the foundation for future NOAA coastal flooding… Continue Reading
Allstate used GasBuddy and other apps to quietly track driving behavior
Ars Technica: “Texas has sued insurance provider Allstate, alleging that the firm and its data broker subsidiary used data from apps like GasBuddy, Routely, and Life360 to quietly track drivers and adjust or cancel their policies. Allstate and Arity, a “mobility data and analytics” firm founded by Allstate in 2016, collected “trillions of miles worth… Continue Reading
‘TrueFood’ Research Database Offers Rankings for 50,000 Processed Foods
“The database, developed by researchers at Mass General Brigham and made available to the public, sheds light on the availability of processed foods at different grocery stores, highlighting the need for more understanding and regulation of the foods offered. A new study by investigators from Mass General Brigham provides information to empower consumers and policymakers… Continue Reading
How to Browse All Digitized Titles in Chronicling America
“Chronicling America is in the process of transitioning from the legacy interface to a new interface and back-end search infrastructure. Read more about it. Through its enhanced search interface, the new Chronicling America offers more options to search the collection, as well as the ability to browse newspapers through the “All Digitized Titles” list and a new… Continue Reading
Special Counsel Report Says Trump Would Have Been Convicted in Election Case
The New York Times – gift article “…The Justice Department delivered the 137-page volume [link provided by DOJ – https://www.justice.gov/storage/Report-of-Special-Counsel-Smith-Volume-1-January-2025.pdf]— representing half of Mr. Smith’s overall final report, with the volume about Mr. Trump’s other federal case, accusing him of mishandling classified documents, still confidential — to Congress just after midnight on Tuesday. The former… Continue Reading
Apple auto-opts everyone into having their photos analyzed by AI for landmarks
The Register: “Apple last year deployed a mechanism for identifying landmarks and places of interest in images stored in the Photos application on its customers iOS and macOS devices and enabled it by default, seemingly without explicit consent. Apple customers have only just begun to notice. The feature, known as Enhanced Visual Search, was called… Continue Reading
Open Port Chronicle: What Port 80 Revealed About The Internet
“At RedHunt Labs, we conduct extensive internet-wide studies as part of Project Resonance to stay ahead of the evolving cyberspace and enhance our Attack Surface Management (ASM) platform. This blog highlights our recent research, where we analyzed billions of IP addresses to check for port 80 open, uncovering fascinating insights. The internet is massive –… Continue Reading
AI Is Like Tinkerbell: It Only Works If We Believe in It Keep clapping. Louder
Futurism – “There’s no limit to the promise of artificial intelligence. Or at least, there’s no limit to the promises that the powerful make about AI. We’re told by tech companies and their investors that AI has the capacity to transform everything, making us more productive workers and more efficient learners — before eventually making… Continue Reading
Inside the Black Box of Predictive Travel Surveillance
Wired – “Behind the scenes, companies and governments are feeding a trove of data about international travelers into opaque AI tools that aim to predict who’s safe—and who’s a threat… In Europe, at least four technology companies—Idemia, SITA, Travizory, and WCC—offer governments around the world software that uses algorithms on traveler data to profile passengers.… Continue Reading
