Author archives

I Tried, and Failed, to Disappear From the Internet

Wirecutter: “As a privacy journalist, I have given all manner of advice for how to secure and obscure an online life, but I’d never undertaken a project that extends the idea of privacy to its logical conclusion: by disappearing completely. So I set out to erase my online life. I failed. Finding myself (online). The …

Subjects: E-Records, Internet, Knowledge Management, Legal Research, Privacy, Search Engines, Social Media

Google Ends Support For ClaimReview

Indicator: “Google announced in a relatively muted fashion that it was killing off support for ClaimReview, the structured data that powered its fact-checking features in Search and News. This is directionally consistent — though far less dramatic in tone and impact — with Mark Zuckerberg’s decision to terminate Meta’s US fact-checking program earlier this year. …

Subjects: AI, Internet, Knowledge Management, Legal Research, Search Engines, Social Media

GIFS Just Got a Lot More Searchable

Internet Archive: Earlier this month, we announced an updated version of GifCities, the Internet Archive’s GeoCities Animated GIF Search Engine. We’ve enacted several improvements to the search engine holding 1.6 million old-school GIFs from the GeoCities era—including “GifSearchies,” an updated text-based search, GIFs searchable by size, GifGrams (customizable webcards) and lots more.

Subjects: Internet, Search Engines

Inside the Chaos of ICE Detention Center 911 Calls

Wired – no paywall: “Records of hundreds of emergency calls from ICE detention centers obtained by WIRED—including audio recordings—show a system inundated by life-threatening incidents, delayed treatment, and overcrowding. A WIRED investigation into 911 calls from 10 of the nation’s largest immigration detention centers found that serious medical incidents are rising at many of the …

Subjects: Censorship, Civil Liberties, Freedom of Information, Government Documents, Health Care, Legal Research, Medicine

The Facts About Vaccine Safety

The Conversation: “In the four months since he began serving as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has made many public statements about vaccines that have cast doubt on their safety and on the objectivity of long-standing processes established to evaluate them. Many of these statements are factually …

Subjects: Health Care, Medicine

How Cops Can Get Your Private Online Data

EFF: “Can the cops get your online data? In short, yes. There are a variety of US federal and state laws which give law enforcement powers to obtain information that you provided to online services. But, there are steps you as a user and/or as a service provider can take to improve online privacy. Law …

Subjects: Civil Liberties, E-Government, E-Records, Government Documents, Internet, Legal Research, Privacy

Anthropic destroyed millions of print books to build its AI models

Follow-up to previous post, Copyrighted books to train AI? Fair. Storing them? Not so much, via Ars Technica: “On Monday, court documents revealed that AI company Anthropic spent millions of dollars physically scanning print books to build Claude, an AI assistant similar to ChatGPT. In the process, the company cut millions of print books from …

Subjects: AI, Copyright, Courts, E-Records, Government Documents, Internet, Knowledge Management, Legal Research, Libraries

House Republicans Advance Plan to Halve GAO’s Funding

Follow-up to House Bill Would Lay Waste to Congress’s Watchdogs and Information Experts, again via Daniel Schuman, House Republicans Advance Plan to Halve GAO’s Funding: “Monday evening, House Legislative Branch appropriators voted 6 to 4 on party lines to cut GAO’s funding by 50% and reduce the Library of Congress’s funding by 12%. This would …

Subjects: Censorship, Congress, E-Government, E-Records, Freedom of Information, Government Documents, Internet, Knowledge Management, Legal Research

AI Overviews Reduce Clicks by 34.5%

ahrefs.blog: “Google says AI Overviews increase clicks. Cold, hard logic disagrees, and so does our research. We analyzed 300,000 keywords and found that the presence of an AI Overview in the search results correlated with a 34.5% lower average clickthrough rate (CTR) for the top-ranking page, compared to similar informational keywords without an AI Overview. …

Subjects: AI, Education, Internet, Knowledge Management, Legal Research, Search Engines

Climate.gov Didn’t Fit Trump’s “Gold Standard”

SciLight – Climate.gov Didn’t Fit Trump’s “Gold Standard.” Dismantling climate.gov is not an accident; it is a blueprint. Jacob Carter. Well, I didn’t expect confirmation so soon, but we now know how this administration will be using the “gold standard science” executive order (EO) and the subsequent OSTP guidance: to undo science that is politically …

Subjects: Censorship, Climate Change, E-Government, E-Records, Economy, Education, Environmental Law, Freedom of Information, Government Documents, Housing, Legal Research, Search Engines, Transportation