The Rise of Techno-Authoritarianism by Adrienne LaFrance [The Atlantic; read free] “Silicon Valley still attracts many immensely talented people who strive to do good, and who are working to realize the best possible version of a more connected, data-rich global society. Even the most deleterious companies have built some wonderful tools. But these tools, at scale,… Continue Reading
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Category Archives: Search Engines
Does anyone even want an AI search engine?
Fast Company: “You’ve probably already noticed your search engines are starting to evolve. Google and Bing have already added both AI-generated results and conversational chatbots to their respective search engines. The Browser Company, a startup that made a big early splash thanks to its mission statement of building a better internet browser, has launched an… 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
Translate a webpage with Firefox
“One of the best things about the internet is that we can access content worldwide. Whether it’s news articles, blogs, or even a review of your latest tech gadget, you can find it all on the seemingly never-ending web. With Firefox’s latest translation feature, this tool will continuously translate a webpage in real-time. While other… Continue Reading
The Top 100 Documentaries We Can Use to Change the World
Films for Action: “Documentaries have an incredible power to raise awareness and create transformative changes in consciousness both at the personal and global levels. Over the last [16] years, we’ve watched hundreds of social change documentaries and cataloged the best of them in this library. There are now so many that we realized we needed to… Continue Reading
How to Delete Conversations in Google Gemini
How to Geek: ” Deleting a conversation on Gemini is quick and easy. Just hover over the conversation, click the dots, and choose “Delete.” To delete multiple or all Gemini chats at once, go to Gemini activity and select a time frame for deletion or turn off deletion altogether. You can’t delete your Google Gemini… Continue Reading
DuckDuckGo’s privacy browser adds built-in password syncing
The Verge: “DuckDuckGo has added a new “Sync & Backup” feature to its privacy-first browser that will keep passwords, bookmarks, and favorites constant across all of your devices — without setting up an account. Falling right in line with its usual claims that it won’t track you or collect your data, the company says that… Continue Reading
Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, February 11, 2024
Via LLRX – Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, February 11, 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… Continue Reading
How to Use Google’s Free AI Generator ImageFX
MakeUseOf: “Key Takeaways Sign in with Google to try the ImageFX AI art generator. Create a prompt and use Expressive Chips for image variations. Explore different ideas by using keywords or copying existing prompts, then download your favorite result.” Continue Reading
Google Scholar is manipulatable
arXiv preprint :2402.04607 – Google Scholar is manipulatable: “Citations are widely considered in scientists’ evaluation. As such, scientists may be incentivized to inflate their citation counts. While previous literature has examined self-citations and citation cartels, it remains unclear whether scientists can purchase citations. Here, we compile a dataset of ~1.6 million profiles on Google Scholar… Continue Reading
Google Gemini Cheat Sheet
TechRepublic: “(Formerly Google Bard): What Is Google Gemini, and How Does It Work? Everything you need to know to get started with Gemini, Google’s generative AI. Gemini is Google’s artificial intelligence ecosystem, including a chatbot that generates responses to user-provided natural language prompts. In response to a prompt, Gemini can pull information from the internet… Continue Reading
