Author archives

Google URL Shortener links will no longer be available

Yet another reason to stop using google via Google for Developers: “In 2018, we announced the deprecation and transition of Google URL Shortener to Firebase Dynamic Links because of the changes we’ve seen in how people find content on the internet, and the number of new popular URL shortening services that emerged in that time. …

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

How a little-known tool is sweeping the real estate industry by giving instant access to vast amounts of homebuyer data

The Record: “…Forewarn is primarily marketed to and used by the real estate industry, and it has been penetrating that market at a rapid clip. Although some real estate agents say the financial information it returns saves time when finding clients most likely to have the budget for the houses they’re looking at, most agents …

Subjects: E-Records, Economy, Financial System, Housing, Knowledge Management, Legal Research, Marketing, Privacy

USPS shared customer postal addresses with Meta, LinkedIn and Snap

“The U.S. Postal Service was sharing the postal addresses of its online customers with advertising and tech giants Meta, LinkedIn and Snap, TechCrunch has found. On Wednesday, the USPS said it addressed the issue and stopped the practice, claiming that it was “unaware” of it. TechCrunch found USPS was sharing customers’ information by way of …

Subjects: E-Commerce, E-Mail, E-Records, Privacy, Social Media

Detect DeepFakes: How to counteract misinformation created by AI

MIT: “See for yourself how accurately you can identify AI-generated images at the DetectFakes Experiment and if you want to learn to spot deepfakes, please check out our recent paper on How to Distinguish AI-Generated Images from Authentic Photographs. You can find more of our work at publications in PNAS, a workshop at IJCAI, and pre-print on arXiv. Check out …

Subjects: Internet, Knowledge Management, Legal Research

Hundreds of racist plant names will change after historic vote by botanists

Nature: “For the first time, researchers have voted to eliminate scientific names of organisms because they are offensive. Botanists decided that more than 200 plants, fungi and algae species names should no longer contain a racial slur related to the word caffra, which is used against Black people and others mostly in southern Africa. Many …

Subjects: Civil Liberties, Environmental Law, Knowledge Management

How to remove court records from Google: 3 effective strategies

Search Engine Land: “Legal issues can drag on for ages. That’s the simple, unfortunate truth. Worse, once a legal matter is filed in court, the case is highly likely to become visible on the web. Hundreds of websites now aggregate public court records and publish them for the world to see. The issue I commonly …

Subjects: Courts, E-Records, Internet, Legal Research, Privacy, Search Engines

U.S. Treasury Shared Cloud Lexicon and Terminology

“The Shared Cloud Lexicon and Taxonomy (Lexicon) was created in response to the 2023 US Treasury cloud report, Adoption of Cloud Services in the Financial Sector. The Treasury report noted a lack of common definition for terms related to cloud services and technology, critical services, and terms associated with contract negotiation and service level agreements. …

Subjects: Economy, Financial System, Internet, Knowledge Management

ChatGPT Isn’t ‘Hallucinating—It’s Bullshitting!

Scientific American [unpaywalled]: “It’s important that we use accurate terminology when discussing how AI chatbots make up informatio. Right now artificial intelligence is everywhere. When you write a document, you’ll probably be asked whether you need your “AI assistant.” Open a PDF and you might be asked whether you want an AI to provide you …

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

The Risks of Botshit

Harvard Business Review: “Hot off the heels of OpenAI releasing their GenAI chatbot ChatGPT to the public in November 2022, Google released their own chatbot called Bard (now Gemini). During Bard’s first public demonstration, it generated a major factual error in response to a question about the discoveries made by the James Webb Space Telescope. …

Subjects: AI, Internet, Knowledge Management, Legal Research

Descrybe.AI On A Mission To Democratize Legal Research

Artificial Lawyer: “In this week’s AL TV Product Walk Through we take a tour of descrybe.ai a free genAI-powered legal research tool built by Richard DiBona and Kara Peterson, a husband and wife team who share an interest in technology, the law, and the democratization of information. By April 2024 they already had over 3 million …

Subjects: AI, Government Documents, Internet, Legal Research

Proton Mail is adding an AI writing assistant

“Introducing Proton Scribe, a private writing assistant that writes and proofreads emails for you: Most of us send emails every day. Finding the right words and tone, however, can take up a lot of time. Today we’re introducing Proton Scribe, a smart, privacy-first writing assistant built right into Proton Mail that helps you compose and …

Subjects: AI, E-Mail, Privacy

UNESCO raises global alarm on the rapid degradation of soils

“UNESCO is warning that 90% of the planet’s land surface could be degraded by 2050, with major risks for biodiversity and human life. At an international conference in Agadir (Morocco), Audrey Azoulay, Director-General of UNESCO, appealed to the Organization’s 194 Member States to improve soil protection and rehabilitation. UNESCO is also undertaking a number of …

Subjects: Climate Change, Environmental Law