Google Chrome, Apple, Revitalizing Old PCs, More: Sunday ResearchBuzz, May 28, 2023

Google Chrome, Apple, Revitalizing Old PCs, More: Sunday ResearchBuzz, May 28, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Google Blog: New ways to customize Chrome on your desktop. “Looking for more ways to make Chrome your own? With the latest updates to Chrome on desktop, it’s easier than ever to personalize the look and feel of your browser — exactly how you want it. Here’s a closer look at the ways you can customize Chrome to make it yours.”

Engadget: Apple’s free My Photo Stream service will shut down on July 26th. “Apple plans to shut down its My Photo Stream service on July 26th, 2023, the company announced on Friday. The free service has been available since the release of iCloud in 2011. You can use My Photo Stream to upload the last 30 days of images and videos – up to a limit of 1,000 – from your Apple devices to iCloud.”

USEFUL STUFF

How-To Geek: 10 Inexpensive Ways to Breathe New Life Into an Old PC. “Why buy a new computer when the one you have just needs a little spring cleaning and some inexpensive upgrades to give you many more years of service? Here are some easy tips and tricks to rejuvenate your old PC.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Tom’s Hardware: Google’s AI Search Feels Like a Content Farm on Steroids. “Currently available for testing in limited beta, Google’s new Search Generative Experience (SGE) shifts the site from being a search engine that links the best content to a publication offering its own mini-articles. But instead of hiring expert writers to do the work, Google employs an AI that ingests data from human-authored content and spits out weaksauce advice with no expertise or authority to back it up.”

NPR: Can a chatbot help people with eating disorders as well as another human?. “The National Eating Disorders Association is shutting its telephone helpline down, firing its small staff and hundreds of volunteers. Instead it’s using a chatbot — and not because the bot is better.”

The Verge: A fake climate change theory is going viral on TikTok after Joe Rogan talked about it. “A made-up global warming theory discussed in the Joe Rogan Experience podcast is spreading on TikTok despite the platform’s new policy against climate disinformation, a new report shared exclusively with The Verge finds.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Reuters: Twitter likely to quit EU code against disinformation, EU official says . “Twitter is likely to pull out from a voluntary EU code of practice to tackle disinformation, but the move does not mean it will quit Europe, an EU official said on Thursday.”

Bloomberg: US and Guam hit by Chinese hacking campaign: report . “An alleged campaign by Chinese state-sponsored hackers on targets in the US and Guam has raised fears that Beijing is preparing to disrupt communications in the Pacific in the event of a conflict. The hacking campaign was first identified by Microsoft Corp on Wednesday and quickly confirmed by authorities in the US, UK and other allied nations.”

South China Morning Post: As India goes digital, unsuspecting victims lose life savings to social media scams. “While cybercrimes are not new to India, a new wave of these crimes is spreading rapidly across the country … These crimes are pushing many deep into debt, and often, despair. Late last month, a software engineer in the southern city of Hyderabad took his own life after losing more than 1.2 million rupees in a similar scheme, just months after he got married.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

University of Arizona: A new method for creating 3D images. “[Professor David] Brady developed the set of algorithms and strategies for measuring a two-dimensional hologram and used those measurements to estimate three-dimensional objects. The resulting image is not a photograph; rather, it is a three-dimensional representation of the scene. A person can view the 3D representation using interactive software or by 3D-printing a model, Brady said.”

Queen Mary University of London: Social media platforms letting down autistic users, new research shows. “While understanding and awareness of autism has majorly progressed in recent years, with around 7000 Brits diagnosed, most autistic adults in the UK still don’t get the support they need to be fully included in society. Autism can have a profound impact, with just 29% of autistic adults in any kind of work and new Government plans announced this month to boost employment prospects.”

New York Times: How Twitter Shrank Elon Musk and Ron DeSantis. “…for all its influence, social media is still downstream of other institutions — universities, newspapers, television channels, movie studios, other internet platforms. Twitter is real life, but only through its relationship to other realities; it doesn’t have the capacity to be a hub of discourse, news gathering or entertainment on its own. And many of Musk’s difficulties as the Twitter C.E.O. have reflected a simple overestimation of social media’s inherent authority and influence.” Good morning, Internet…

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May 28, 2023 at 05:28PM
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Nebraska Cultural Heritage, Scotland Endangered Archives, Google Chrome, More: Saturday ResearchBuzz, May 27, 2023

Nebraska Cultural Heritage, Scotland Endangered Archives, Google Chrome, More: Saturday ResearchBuzz, May 27, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Lincoln Journal-Star: WanderNebraska kicks off second year with 150 sites across state. “This Memorial Day weekend, the Nebraska State Historical Society Foundation will launch its 2023 WanderNebraska Travel Adventure Program with an expanded list of more than 150 sites across the state…To make things easier, the foundation also launched a new website featuring information about all 150 sites, including hours of operation, upcoming events, a map for directions and more.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Hold the Front Page: Newspaper archive featuring almost 1,000 titles saved after fundraising success. “A bid to save a collection of almost 1,000 historic newspapers has succeeded after raising more than £115,000 in six months. The National Library of Scotland launched the ‘Save Our Stories’ campaign, backed by The Scotsman, after warning around two-thirds of the newspapers in its archives risked being lost unless ‘essential conservation and preservation work’ was carried out.”

9to5 Google: Google Chrome extensions can now create a side panel UI. “In addition to your Bookmarks and Reading List, the desktop Chrome side panel will soon support Manifest V3 extensions that want to display an interface.”

USEFUL STUFF

Tom’s Hardware: Windows XP Offline Activation Enabled With This New Tool. “A recent blog post by TinyApps highlights the arrival of an offline tool that can successfully activate a Windows XP install. The new tool is safer than prior solutions, it isn’t a crack and it works completely offline. It doesn’t require online connectivity (a risky area for Win XP machines to tread), which is a considerable bonus.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Washington Post: Japan’s unlikely venue for G-7 discussions: A website beloved by anime fans. “The gathering of world leaders here has attracted an unlikely audience online: Japanese youths glued to more than 72 hours of summitry and offering real-time commentary on a livestreaming site popular among anime fans.”

Jerusalem Post: A digital Jewish library aims to add women’s Torah scholarship to its shelves. “Sefaria, the app that contains a digital collection of Jewish texts, has made everything from Genesis to an essay on Jewish law and gambling accessible at the tap of a finger. But in one way, it’s the same as nearly every other Jewish library in history: Almost all the texts, from ancient times to the present, are written by men. Now, Sefaria is hoping to chip away at that gender disparity by organizing and supporting a group of 20 women Torah scholars who are writing new books on Jewish texts.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

WIRED: Deepfakes, Cheapfakes, and Twitter Censorship Mar Turkey’s Elections. “This election cycle has been marred by a torrent of misinformation and disinformation on social media, made more difficult by a media environment that, after years of pressure from the government, has been accused of systematic bias toward the incumbent president. That has intensified as the Erdoğan administration struggles to hold onto power.”

Bloomberg: China cracks down on over 1 million social media posts, accounts. “China said it took action on more than 1 million social media posts and accounts in its latest campaign to moderate online content that it regards as malicious. Authorities permanently banned 66,000 accounts and cracked down on 928,000 others in the drive that started in March, China’s cyberspace regulator said in a statement on Saturday.”

Reuters: US jury says Google owes Sonos $32.5 million in smart-speaker patent case. “Alphabet Inc’s Google must pay $32.5 million in damages for infringing one of smart-speaker maker Sonos Inc’s patents in its wireless audio devices, a San Francisco federal jury decided on Friday.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Finnish Center for Artificial Intelligence: Chat AIs can role-play humans in surveys and pilot studies. “Synthetic data from large language models can mimic human responses in interviews and questionnaires. Research data from popular crowdsourcing platforms may now contain fake responses that cannot be reliably detected, raising the risk of poisoned data.”

USC Viterbi School of Engineering: Can AI Teach Your Child Perseverance?. “A team of researchers that includes Emmanuel Johnson, a Postdoctoral Research Associate at USC Viterbi School of Engineering’s Information Sciences Institute (ISI), has been awarded a $20 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to fund a new artificial intelligence institute focused on AI in education.”

University of Rochester: Large language models could be the catalyst for a new era of chemistry. “Large language models like the one behind the popular ChatGPT could transform the future of chemistry, according to a researcher at the University of Rochester. Andrew D. White, an associate professor of chemical engineering, outlines why he believes large language models (LLMs) represent the future of the field in an article published by Nature Reviews Chemistry.” Good morning, Internet…

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May 27, 2023 at 09:08PM
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Data Storytelling Asia, Henry Kissinger, Google Maps, More: Friday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, May 26, 2023

Data Storytelling Asia, Henry Kissinger, Google Maps, More: Friday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, May 26, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

International Journalists’ Network: New data storytelling tool available for journalists [Asia]. “Kontinentalist, a Singapore-based media that tells data stories about Asia, is launching Lapis, a no-code data storytelling tool that facilitates real-time collaboration and long-term community building, in December. The tool aims to spearhead data storytelling excellence in Asia and beyond, with support from the 2022 Google News Initiative (GNI) Challenge. Interested journalists can sign up to be one of the first on the new platform or help shape the tool as an alpha tester.”

National Security Archive: Henry Kissinger’s Documented Legacy. “To contribute to a balanced and more comprehensive evaluation of Kissinger’s legacy, the National Security Archive has compiled a small, select dossier of declassified records—memos, memcons, and ‘telcons’ that Kissinger wrote, said and/or read—documenting TOP SECRET deliberations, operations and policies during Kissinger’s time in the White House and Department of State.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

India Today: Google Maps Street View now available across India, even small village and town roads mapped and photographed. “The Google Maps Street View feature appears to be available in most Indian cities, letting users experience a ‘virtual representation’ of their surroundings. Google announced Street View for Maps in India last year, though it was initially launched in Bengaluru on a pilot basis.”

PC Magazine: YouTube Stories Heading for the Google Graveyard. “YouTube’s answer to Instagram stories, YouTube Stories, is being killed off. In a blog post(Opens in a new window) announcing the move, Google said that starting June 26 users will no longer be able to post Stories, and their existing posts will expire seven days after that.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Screen Rant: Shonen Jump Develops AI Manga Writing Tool, Steps Into Controversy. “Shonen Jump+’s Deputy Editor-in-Chief Yuta Momiyama tweeted out a link to the company’s new AI tool Comic-Copilot (or Comicopa for short), which is intended to help mangaka with simple tasks like refining dialogue and creating character names. Mangakas can ask the AI a question or give it a request and Comicopa will attempt to help them the best it can. The website stresses that the tool is meant to be used as an aid for mangakas and not their replacement and as of now this certainly rings true.”

CNN: Google removes ‘Slavery Simulator’ game from store following a wave of criticism in Brazil. ” A game entitled ‘Slavery Simulator,’ where players can ‘buy and sell’ enslaved Black characters, has been taken down from Google’s app store after widespread criticism from Brazilian social media users.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Associated Press: The cyber gulag: How Russia tracks, censors and controls its citizens. “Rights advocates say that Russia under President Vladimir Putin has harnessed digital technology to track, censor and control the population, building what some call a ‘cyber gulag’ — a dark reference to the labor camps that held political prisoners in Soviet times. It’s new territory, even for a nation with a long history of spying on its citizens.”

The Hacker News: Severe Flaw in Google Cloud’s Cloud SQL Service Exposed Confidential Data. “A new security flaw has been disclosed in the Google Cloud Platform’s (GCP) Cloud SQL service that could be potentially exploited to obtain access to confidential data.”

NPR: TikTok sues Montana over its new law banning the app. “TikTok has filed a federal lawsuit against Montana after the state passed a law last week intended to ban the app from being downloaded within its borders. The widely expected lawsuit argues that banning a hugely popular social media app amounts to an illegal suppression of free speech tantamount to censorship.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Columbia Journalism Review: How the media is covering ChatGPT. “In order to better understand how ChatGPT is being covered by newsrooms, we interviewed a variety of academics and journalists on how the media has been framing coverage of generative AI chatbots. We also pulled data on the volume of coverage in online news using the Media Cloud database and on TV news using data from the Internet TV News Archive, which we acquired via The GDELT Project’s API, in order to get a sketch of the coverage so far.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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May 27, 2023 at 01:44AM
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Find TV Stations By City/State and Google Search Them: Marion’s Monocle v2

Find TV Stations By City/State and Google Search Them: Marion’s Monocle v2
By ResearchBuzz

I have mentioned before the idea of “persistent metadata,” metadata about physical objects that is always available and always applicable. The two types of persistent metadata I use the most in building my Search Gizmos are time and location.

The ability to narrow down what you’re searching by a date or place with contextual meaning is a powerful tool. It gives you a non-keyword-based way to focus your results (so important when searching unstructured data!) and adds a contextual boundary to hopefully make your results richer and more relevant. But we can make it still better by adding an additional search filter: an authoritative source. Let me give you an example.

I learned today that the Federal Communications Commission has an API for its Public Inspection File. This database contains information about the television and radio station licenses issued by the FCC. You can search that database by keyword, whether that’s a station name or location. The results you get back from the searches include information about the station’s owners, call sign, location, and website.

In other words, the FCC has a database of Web sites for licensed television stations that you can search by location. Looking at it, I thought “Why don’t I apply that data to a Google search?”

So I did. I made a Gizmo, Marion’s Monocle 2, that lets you specify a state, get a list of FCC-licensed television stations in that state (grouped by city), choose up to 10 of them, and create a query to explore those stations’ Web space on Google via the site: syntax. You can then add keywords to the initial query to run a more specific search or just browse to see what Google is indexing from those particular sources. In addition, you can search Google News to see if any articles by that station have been indexed by Google in the last 24 hours.

For a long time I have wanted a way to search news sources relevant to a location that I KNEW were relevant to a location, not whatever some black hat SEO person had managed to convince Google was relevant. Restricting my search to only those resources licensed by the FCC seems like a pretty tight way to do that.

May 26, 2023 at 09:36PM
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Superspreaders of Low-Credibility Information, Mapping Telegraph Technology, Twitter, More: Friday ResearchBuzz, May 26, 2023

Superspreaders of Low-Credibility Information, Mapping Telegraph Technology, Twitter, More: Friday ResearchBuzz, May 26, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Indiana University: Top FIBers dashboard tracks superspreaders of low-credibility information online. “With the goal of tracking superspreaders that are disseminating large quantities of low-credibility content, Indiana University’s Observatory on Social Media, or OSoMe, has launched a new tool: the Top FIBers dashboard. This dashboard provides monthly reports highlighting the top 10 superspreaders of low-credibility information on social media.”

Carnegie Mellon University: Digital Map Provides Interactive Lesson on Telegraph History. “Before Andrew Carnegie became the industrialist he’s remembered as today, he worked for an early telegraph company in Pittsburgh as a messenger boy. When the first telegraph office opened in Pittsburgh, it was the westernmost telegraph office in North America, as shown by a new digital map created by [Professor] Edmund Russell.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

BBC: Twitter engineering boss Foad Dabiri quits day after DeSantis launch glitches. “An engineering chief at Twitter says he is leaving the company a day after the launch of Ron DeSantis’ US presidential campaign on the platform was hit with technical glitches. Foad Dabiri tweeted: ‘After almost four incredible years at Twitter, I decided to leave the nest yesterday.'” This man had an impossible task given the resources available.

Android Police: Google shoves more ads into the Play Store, to no one’s surprise. “The banners themselves are wider, so you’ll see two per row, but you’re getting two rows, so you’re actually seeing more ads — four of them, to be more precise — on your screen. And yet again, you can scroll through them to see more.” *Altavista-ing intensifies*

TechCrunch: Twitter introduces a new $5,000-per-month API tier. “Twitter announced a new API tier today called Twitter API Pro for startups that costs $5,000 per month. The tier gives developers the ability to fetch 1 million tweets per month and post 300,000 tweets per month, and gives them access to the full archive search endpoint.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

New York Times: Start-Ups Bring Silicon Valley Ethos to a Lumbering Military-Industrial Complex. “Small, fast-moving U.S. tech firms are using the war in Ukraine to demonstrate a new generation of military systems but face the challenge of selling them to a risk-averse Defense Department.”

Castanet: Google Maps sending drivers on unpassable route to Sun Peaks. “Police have been called twice this month by drivers who followed bad directions into the mountains east of Sun Peaks. Chase RCMP say they were called at 9:30 p.m. on May 13 to help a stranded motorist who had called 911. The caller had been following Google Maps directions to Sun Peaks and ended up lost in the dark near Cahilty Forest Service Road in Adams Lake.”

BBC: Venezuela: ‘I’m paid to tweet state propaganda’. “Every day, Venezuela’s ministry of communications tweets a ‘hashtag of the day’, which is repeated not only by elected officials’ accounts and state sympathisers but also by ‘digital troops’ like Rafael, who are paid to share propaganda.’

SECURITY & LEGAL

CBS: Senators issued satellite phones, offered demonstrations on upgraded security devices. “Amid growing concerns of security risks to members of Congress, over 50 senators have been issued satellite phones for emergency communication, people familiar with the measures told CBS News. The devices are part of a series of new security measures being offered to senators by the Senate Sergeant at Arms, who took over shortly after the assault on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.”

The Guardian: Twitter accused of responding ‘to tyrants quickly’ but ignoring Australian government. “Julie Inman Grant tells Senate estimates Twitter’s slowness to tackle online child abuse material is in contrast to its blocking of anti-Erdoğan tweets in the lead-up to the Turkish election.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Galleries West: New Equipment Developed by Edward Burtynsky to Scan Major Photo Collection. “The Image Centre at Toronto Metropolitan University will digitize 25,000 press photographs of Canadian events, speeding the normally laborious work with an innovative machine developed by Toronto photographer Edward Burtynsky.”

Drexel University: Q+A: How Can Artificial Intelligence Help Doctors Compare Notes To Improve Diagnoses? . “Spotting patterns among patient records can allow physicians to better diagnose and treat their patients. With access to more records, and more time to parse them, it’s possible that these health care providers could identify and provide better treatments for conditions that have been particularly elusive to diagnoses. Recent developments in artificial intelligence and natural language processing programs are making it possible to glean information from volumes of electronic health records — giving doctors an important new tool to help patients.” Good morning, Internet…

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May 26, 2023 at 05:31PM
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WHO Open Data, The Browser Company, Zoonotic Disease Nevada, More: Thursday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, May 25, 2023

WHO Open Data, The Browser Company, Zoonotic Disease Nevada, More: Thursday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, May 25, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

World Health Organization: WHO releases data.who.int. “Data.who.int provides open access to WHO’s health data through a harmonized, consolidated and seamless experience. Starting with the data underlying WHO’s annual World Health Statistics report, the new website reimagines the indicator page – the most representative level of data presentation – with consistent, expressive and accessible visualization, while also presenting metadata to promote ease of accessibility, reference and use.”

TechCrunch: Arc browser’s new tool lets you remove some elements from a website. “The Browser Company, the company behind the web browser Arc, introduced a fun new tool today called Boosts. It lets you customize a website with new colors and fonts. But the best feature of this tool is that you can ‘Zap’ (read: remove) any element from a website like a sidebar or a trending topic box.”

KOLO (Nevada): Nevada launches website for kids to learn about zoonotic diseases. “One Health Nevada is an interactive website for kids to learn about how diseases spread between animals and humans and what people can do to keep themselves and animals healthy. The site is geared towards kids involved in 4-H, or those who own pets, livestock, enjoy hunting, fishing or being outdoors. They can also find health tips, activities and educational resources.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

The Hindu: Snowflake buys ex-Google executives built search engine Neeva . “Snowflake, a cloud data management firm, has purchased ex-Google executives built ad-free search engine Neeva for an undisclosed sum. The details of the transaction have not been spelled out, but the acquisition could give the cloud data management firm a lift as it aims to becomes an AI company.”

USEFUL STUFF

New York Times: To Mute or Unfollow? Experts’ Tips for a Mindful Approach to Social Media. “You don’t have to quit Instagram and TikTok cold turkey. Use these strategies — some practical, some more philosophical — to be online in a healthier or less harmful way.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Sky News: Sunak and Google CEO to meet for talks on AI threats. “Rishi Sunak and Sundar Pichai will meet on Friday for talks amid an intensifying debate about the threats and opportunities posed by artificial intelligence, Sky News learns.”

NARA: National Archives Awards $6.5 Million in Grants for Historical Records Projects . “Grants went to 17 edition projects to publish the papers of key American figures such as Frederick Douglass and Jane Addams, as well as cross-cutting projects such as the Chinese American WWII Veterans Online Resource and Last Seen: Finding Family After Slavery.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

The Verge: An Android app started secretly recording users almost a year after it was listed on Google Play. “An Android recording app called iRecorder Screen Recorder began as an innocent screen recording app but turned evil nearly a year after it was first released, as detailed by Ars Technica. The app first came out in September 2021, but after an update the following August, it began recording a minute of audio every 15 minutes and forwarding those recordings, through an encrypted link, to the developer’s server.”

Moscow Times: Putin Signs Off on Sanctioned Tycoons’ Shared Yandex Stake – Reports. “President Vladimir Putin has agreed on the sale of a majority stake in the Russian side of splintered tech giant Yandex to three sanctioned billionaires and the state-owned VTB Bank, the news websites The Bell and Meduza reported Sunday, citing four unnamed sources close to the company.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Scripps Research: Scripps Research develops behind-the-scenes tool for better biomedical data discovery. “This new tool, called the Data Discovery Engine (DDE) Schema Playground, was described in a paper that published in BMC Bioinformatics on April 20, 2023. The DDE Schema Playground is a browser-based resource that empowers scientists to make their data more findable and accessible on the web, which has been a significant barrier in the past.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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May 26, 2023 at 12:47AM
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KinBank, ChatGPT Prompt Engineering, Merlin Bird ID App, More: Thursday ResearchBuzz, May 25, 2023

KinBank, ChatGPT Prompt Engineering, Merlin Bird ID App, More: Thursday ResearchBuzz, May 25, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Phys .org: Database stores names for family members in 1,200+ languages. “Fiona Jordan, professor of anthropology from the University of Bristol, has been working with colleagues from Australia, Finland, and Brazil to develop KinBank—a catalog of more than 1,200 languages and their words for family members—known as kinship terminology. It features more than 210,000 kinship terms ranging from cousins to great-grandparents.”

Vanderbilt University: Vanderbilt launches free online ChatGPT course, shaping the future of AI education. “Jules White, associate dean for strategic learning programs and associate professor of computer science at Vanderbilt University, is making ChatGPT more accessible and useful for the broader public with the launch of his free online Prompt Engineering for ChatGPT course on the Coursera platform.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Cornell Chronicle: Merlin milestone: App now helps ID birds worldwide. “The free Merlin Bird ID app from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology just hit a major milestone: The digital field guide and ID assistant can now help users identify birds in any country – a grand total of 10,315 species.”

Yahoo Sports: Shaquille O’Neal finally served in FTX lawsuit while covering Celtics-Heat in Miami . “O’Neal, who has been apparently ‘dodging’ lawyers representing FTX investors for months, was finally served a complaint Tuesday that’s part of a proposed class-action lawsuit filed against the failed cryptocurrency company, Adam Moskowitz, a lawyer representing the FTX investors, confirmed to People.”

Bloomberg: Microsoft to Add Bing Search to OpenAI’s ChatGPT in Battle With Google. “Microsoft Corp. is bringing its Bing search engine to OpenAI Inc.’s ChatGPT, further tightening ties with the artificial intelligence startup in a bid to challenge Google.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

NPR: Ron DeSantis debuts presidential bid in a glitch-ridden Twitter ‘disaster’. “It was supposed to be a historic moment for Twitter: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis would smoothly kick off his presidential candidacy on the social media platform. An uninterrupted conversation between DeSantis and Twitter CEO Elon Musk would be live-streamed on Twitter Spaces to mark the event. But instead, the live audio event was beset with technical malfunctions. After some 20 minutes of crashing and echoing and chaos, it abruptly ended.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Reuters: EU, Google to develop voluntary AI pact ahead of new AI rules, EU’s Breton says. “Alphabet and the European Commission aim to develop an artificial intelligence (AI) pact involving European and non-European companies before rules are established to govern the technology, EU industry chief Thierry Breton said on Wednesday.”

Dutch News: Dutch consumers group plans privacy case against Google. “Dutch consumers lobby group Consumentenbond said on Tuesday it is preparing a mass claim against Google for infringing the privacy of users. The watchdog claims that the American tech company is collecting a large amount of sensitive information about users, much of which consumers are unaware of.”

Omaha World-Herald: Bill passes to create video archive of Nebraska legislative activity. “Legislative Bill 254, introduced by State Sen. Tom Brewer of Gordon, passed on a 48-0 vote. The measure would require the creation of a digital archive of video coverage of legislative debate and public hearings starting with the 2025 session.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Scientific American: People, Not Google’s Algorithm, Create Their Own Partisan ‘Bubbles’ Online. “A study published today in Nature found that Google’s search engine does not return disproportionately partisan results. Instead politically polarized Google users tend to silo themselves by clicking on links to partisan news sites. These findings suggest that, at least when it comes to Google searches, it may be easier for people to escape online echo chambers than previously thought—but only if they choose to do so.”

The Verge: A Google DeepMind AI language model is now making descriptions for YouTube Shorts. “Google just combined DeepMind and Google Brain into one big AI team, and on Wednesday, the new Google DeepMind shared details on how one of its visual language models (VLM) is being used to generate descriptions for YouTube Shorts, which can help with discoverability.”

The Packer: Survey measures impact of rising costs, stress, social media on food choices. “The survey showed 4 in 10 Americans (42%) said they have come across social media content about food and nutrition in the past year. Predictably, exposure to this content is inversely proportional with age, with Gen Z (71%) and millennials (58%) reporting the highest exposure, as compared to older generations, the survey said. Two-thirds said they trust that information at least a little (46%) or a lot (21%), the survey found.” Good morning, Internet…

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May 25, 2023 at 05:29PM
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