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Nature Scientific Reports [full text] – People are poorly equipped to detect AI-powered voice clones. Sarah Barrington, Emily A. Cooper & Hany Farid. “As generative artificial intelligence (AI) continues its ballistic trajectory, everything from text to audio, image, and video generation continues to improve at mimicking human-generated content. Through a series of perceptual studies, we report on …
Follow up to Government Workers Say Their Out-of-Office Replies Were Forcibly Changed to Blame Democrats for Shutdown – See Also: Mashable: “The U.S. federal government shut down at midnight on Wednesday, bringing a halt to numerous government services after Congress could not agree on a crucial funding bill. Unsurprisingly, the Trump administration was quick to …
Axios: “Hate crimes have hit record levels in the past few years. Analysts say antisemitic crimes rose again in 2024. MAGA activists are going after two of the nation’s most storied civil rights watchdogs, accusing them of smearing conservatives as extremists. MAGA leaders, backed by the Trump administration and Elon Musk, are trying to undermine the …
Urban Institute – Regulatory Changes Could Significantly Reduce Eligibility for Benefits, Particularly among Older Workers. September 18, 2025. The Social Security Administration (SSA) is preparing a proposed rule that could significantly reshape how disability eligibility is determined for two major programs: Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) and Supplemental Security Income (SSI). This brief examines the …
The Verge: “The Trump administration declared war on the “terrorist organization” of “antifa” and the supposed “networks” associated with it last week. Antifa is not so much a vast national conspiracy as it is simply an abbreviation for anti-fascism — but don’t point out that anti-anti-fascism looks a lot like fascism. That would make you …
What is FAST.com measuring? FAST.com speed test gives you an estimate of your current Internet speed. You will generally be able to get this speed from leading Internet services, which use globally distributed servers. Why does FAST.com focus primarily on download speed? Download speed is most relevant for people who are consuming content on the …
The Register: “Tried by two-thirds of firms, ignored by most devs, and productivity barely moved. Software development was one of the first areas to adopt generative AI, but the promised revolution has so far delivered only modest productivity gains, and Bain says only a full rethink of the software lifecycle will shift the dial. As …
DataIndex.us: “Demography has historically been a quiet field with little time in the national spotlight. Between the three of us, we have spent nearly 5 decades working at the nexus of applied demographic modeling and public policy. We have built population estimates for the United States Census Bureau (Chris and Mark), built population estimates and …
NextGov/FCW – “At least 15 government oversight websites were down — and with them, access to watchdog reports and required hotline and whistleblower links — as of Wednesday evening. That’s not due to the federal shutdown that began at midnight; it’s a deliberate move by the White House, whose Office of Management and Budget is …
Wired – no paywall: “On Wednesday, the first day of the US government shutdown, employees at the Department of Education (DOE) set their automatic out-of-office email responses to inform recipients that they would be unable to respond until after the shutdown. Hours later, many DOE employees realized their response message had been altered to contain …
TNR: “President Donald Trump’s new scheme to transform the federal government into a pharmacy is already raising red flags for legal and health experts. Earlier this week, Trump announced the launch of TrumpRx, a strangely socialist-sounding service where consumers can procure cheap prescription drugs from the U.S. government—just days before Trump’s 100 percent tariff on …
Democracy Forward: “The United States is in an existential fight for democracy. With so much on the line for millions of people, the Supreme Court remains a decisive arena. The new term begins on Monday, October 6, and will determine the role of this Court on attempts at unchecked power. The authoritarian threats from the Trump-Vance …
