By ResearchBuzz
NEW RESOURCES
New Mexico Environment Department: Environment Department releases interactive dashboard of
formerly operating uranium mine and mill sites. This link goes to a PDF file. “Today, the New Mexico Environment Department’s (NMED) Office of Strategic Initiatives has released an interactive dashboard to simplify researching the extent of uranium impacts and easily access the federal and state government agencies involved in each site’s management. The dashboard allows members of the public to easily find information on these legacy mines and milling operations in their area.”
TWEAKS AND UPDATES
The Guardian: ‘I do feel bad about this’: Englishman who posed as HyperVerse CEO says sorry to investors who lost millions. “The man who posed as the chief executive of the collapsed crypto scheme HyperVerse has confirmed he was paid to act the part, receiving 180,000 Thai baht (about A$7,500 or £4,000) over nine months and a free suit as payment.”
Phone Arena: YouTube is really serious about podcasts, launches new tool for creators. “YouTube is one of the services that has already been pushing podcasts to its consumers as much as possible. To make it easier for creators to reach bigger audiences, YouTube is now rolling out a new feature that will allow podcast creators to upload episodes directly from their RSS feeds.”
AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD
National Library of the Netherlands: Statement on commercial generative AI. “The KB makes written resources widely accessible and expects re-users to respect copyright, indicate sources and process personal data responsibly. In our opinion, AI companies are failing in that respect. In our view, the way many commercial AI models are now trained – by crawling websites without permission – does not serve the public interest. … We have therefore adapted our terms of use and taken technical measures to combat crawling of our websites Delpher and DBNL by commercial parties from now on. ”
New York Times: Kim Reynolds Has Another Account, @Kimberl26890376, and Opinions About Donald Trump. “Not long after the calendar turned to 2024, Kim Reynolds, the Republican governor of Iowa, signed into X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, and posted about the presidential primary, where she has emerged as a key backer of Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida over former President Donald J. Trump. But she was not posting from her publicly verified @KimReynoldsIA account.”
SECURITY & LEGAL
The Verge: eBay will pay $3 million over bizarre cyberstalking campaign. “eBay has agreed to pay $3 million in connection with a 2019 harassment campaign directed at a Massachusetts couple that had been critical of the e-commerce site. The US Department of Justice announced the maximum criminal penalty on Thursday and said the company committed six felony offenses.”
Reuters: Google’s $2.7 Billion EU Antitrust Fine Should Be Upheld, Court Adviser Says. “Alphabet unit Google’s 2.42-billion-euro ($2.7 billion) EU antitrust fine should be upheld by Europe’s top court, an adviser to the court said on Thursday, dealing a potential blow to the world’s most popular internet search engine.”
PC Magazine: In a First, Google Lobbies to Pass Right-to-Repair Law. “Not long ago, the tech industry tried its best to squash the Right to Repair movement. But Google is now the latest company to vocally support it, as well as right-to-repair legislation. On Thursday, the search giant formally endorsed a right-to-repair bill being considered in Oregon, with the hopes that other states follow suit.”
RESEARCH & OPINION
University of Cincinnati: Let me check my phone again: UC Blue Ash students publish research on smartphone usage. “New research conducted by students and a professor at the University of Cincinnati Blue Ash College finds that smartphone usage can increase and even become unhealthy for those who have obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), a psychiatric disorder with symptoms related to unwanted and distressing thoughts that can lead to repetitive and disruptive behaviors.”
University of British Columbia: ChatGPT has read almost the whole internet. That hasn’t solved its diversity issues. “AI language models are booming. The current frontrunner is ChatGPT, which can do everything from taking a bar exam, to creating an HR policy, to writing a movie script. But it and other models still can’t reason like a human. In this Q&A, Dr. Vered Shwartz (she/her), assistant professor in the UBC department of computer science, and masters student Mehar Bhatia (she/her) explain why reasoning could be the next step in AI—and why it’s important to train these models using diverse datasets from different cultures.”
Publishers Weekly: OverDrive: Record Number of Libraries Hit One Million Digital Lends in 2023. “OverDrive reps reported this week that a record 152 library systems and consortia across seven countries—including 41 states and seven Canadian provinces—surpassed the one million digital lends benchmark in 2023, which includes e-books, digital audiobooks, and digital magazines. The numbers represent a significant jump from the 129 library systems that hit the milestone in 2022.”
OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL
Ars Technica: Those Games turns crappy mobile game ads into actually good puzzles. “Their full title is Yeah! You Want ‘Those Games,’ Right? So Here You Go! Now, Let’s See You Clear Them!, originally in all caps. Developer Monkeycraft, makers of the Katamari Damacy Reroll titles, has now made many of the games that don’t seem to exist. They’ve just arrived for the PlayStation, having already provided their public service on Nintendo Switch and Windows on Steam.” Good morning, Internet…
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January 12, 2024 at 06:31PM
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