Day archives: March 8th, 2023

How you could build a search that the fediverse would welcome

Anil Dash: “Mastodon and the fediverse are clearly taking off, bringing in millions of new users, and also organically inspiring a wave of technical innovation that dwarfs all of the efforts that the bribes and empty promises of the Web3 crypto bubble couldn’t touch. I’m even enjoying having settled into a relatively permanent new fediverse …

Subjects: Internet, Knowledge Management, Search Engines, Social Media

Freedom in the World 2023

Freedom House – Marking 50 Years in the Struggle for Democracy – Key Findings Global freedom declined for the 17th consecutive year.  Moscow’s war of aggression led to devastating human rights atrocities in Ukraine. New coups and other attempts to undermine representative government destabilized Burkina Faso, Tunisia, Peru, and Brazil. Previous years’ coups and ongoing …

Subjects: Censorship, Civil Liberties, Economy, Education, Free Speech, Government Documents, Internet, Poverty

Wikipedia + AI = truth? DuckDuckGo hopes so with new answerbot

Ars Technica: “Not to be left out of the rush to integrate generative AI into search, on Wednesday DuckDuckGo announced DuckAssist, an AI-powered factual summary service powered by technology from Anthropic and OpenAI. It is available for free today as a wide beta test for users of DuckDuckGo’s browser extensions and browsing apps. Being powered …

Subjects: AI, Internet, Search Engines

Beware of Book Blurbs

The Million: “Blurb is a funny sounding word. It’s phonetically unappealing, beginning and ending with unattractive voiced bilabial stops, and its definition—an advertisement or announcement, especially a laudatory one—carries some of the same meaning as another unattractive word, blubber, which evokes excess in its dual definition as both an expostulation of unrestrained emotion as well …

Subjects: Knowledge Management, Libraries

A growing plastic smog estimated to be over 170 trillion plastic particles afloat in the world’s oceans

Eriksen M, Cowger W, Erdle LM, Coffin S, Villarrubia-Gómez P, Moore CJ, et al. (2023) A growing plastic smog, now estimated to be over 170 trillion plastic particles afloat in the world’s oceans—Urgent solutions required. PLoS ONE 18(3): e0281596. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0281596: “As global awareness, science, and policy interventions for plastic escalate, institutions around the world are …

Subjects: Climate Change, Economy, Environmental Law, Food and Nutrition

Inside the Suspicion Machine

Wired: “Obscure government algorithms are making life-changing decisions about millions of people around the world. Here, for the first time, we reveal how one of these systems works…Machine learning algorithms like Rotterdam’s are being used to make more and more decisions about people’s lives, including what schools their children attend, who gets interviewed for jobs, …

Subjects: Civil Liberties, Internet, Knowledge Management, Legal Research, Privacy

Recipes by AI

“Let’s Foodie was created to help foodies across the globe get answers to some of the most common alongside some of the most obscure questions that get asked in the kitchen. Launched in 2021, Let’s Foodie is a constantly expanding platform providing information on a range of topics including how to freeze, reheat and microwave …

Subjects: AI, Food and Nutrition