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Category Archives: Search Engines

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

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

Bias, Skew and Search Engines Are Sufficient to Explain Online Toxicity

Association for Computing Machinery. Scholar One Manuscripts. Bias, Skew and Search Engines Are Sufficient to Explain Online Toxicity: “U.S. political discourse seems to have fissioned into discrete bubbles, each reflecting its own distorted image of the world. Many blame machine-learning algorithms that purportedly maximize “engagement” — serving up content that keeps YouTube or Facebook users… Continue Reading

Using Google Search to Find Software Can Be Risky

Krebs on Security: “Google continues to struggle with cybercriminals running malicious ads on its search platform to trick people into downloading booby-trapped copies of popular free software applications. The malicious ads, which appear above organic search results and often precede links to legitimate sources of the same software, can make searching for software on Google… Continue Reading

Google’s Location Data Policy Update

EPIC: “In December 2023, Google announced an update to its location data policy to provide users with more control over their sensitive location information. While this seems like a promising step in the right direction, we should be mindful of Google’s long history of failing to uphold its privacy obligations and vigilant in monitoring Google’s… Continue Reading

A Search Engine That Finds You Weird Old Books

Clive Thompson: “(tl;dr — if you want to skip this essay and just try out my search tool, it’s here.) Last fall, I wrote about the concept of “rewilding your attention” — why it’s good to step away from the algorithmic feeds of big social media and find stranger stuff in nooks of the Internet.… Continue Reading

Google Maps is getting ‘supercharged’ with generative AI

The Verge: “Google is bringing generative AI to — where else? — Google Maps, promising to help users find cool places through the use of large language models (LLM). The feature will answer queries for restaurant or shopping recommendations, for example, using its LLM to “analyze Maps’ detailed information about more than 250 million places… Continue Reading

Can This A.I.-Powered Search Engine Replace Google? It Has for Me.

The New York Times [read free] “A start-up called Perplexity shows what’s possible for a search engine built from scratch with artificial intelligence…Perplexity. The year-old search engine, whose founders previously worked in A.I. research at OpenAI and Meta, has quickly become one of the most buzzed-about products in the tech world. Tech insiders rave about… Continue Reading