Grist: “These climate-driven impacts are taking a serious toll on human health. Cases of disease linked to mosquitos, ticks, and fleas tripled in the U.S. between 2004 and 2016, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The threat extends beyond commonly recognized vector-borne diseases. Research shows more than half of all the pathogens… Continue Reading
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Author Archives: Sabrina I. Pacifici
You Should Browse With Incognito More Often: Here’s Why
MakeUseOf: “Key Takeaways Incognito mode prevents your browsing history, cookies, and information entered in forms from being saved on your device, making your browsing private from others who use the same device. Incognito mode also helps you avoid targeted ads and prevents websites from storing cookies on your device, offering more privacy and a smoother… Continue Reading
Political Machines: Understanding the Role of AI in the U.S. 2024 Elections and Beyond
Martin, Z., Jackson, D., Trauthig, I., and Woolley, S. (May, 2024). Political machines: Understanding the role of generative AI in the U.S. 2024 elections and beyond. Center for Media Engagement. Propagandists are pragmatists and innovators.1 Political marketing is a game in which the cutting edge can be the margin between victory and defeat. Generative Artificial… Continue Reading
Bluesky and Mastodon users can now talk to each other with Bridgy Fed
TechCrunch: “An important step toward a more interoperable “fediverse” — the broader network of decentralized social media apps like Mastodon, Bluesky and others — has been achieved. Now, users on decentralized apps like Mastodon, powered by the ActivityPub protocol, and those powered by Bluesky’s AT Protocol, can easily follow people on other networks, see their… Continue Reading
OpenAI Is Just Facebook Now
The Atlantic [unpaywalled] “Facing one controversy after the next, the artificial-intelligence company enters a new phase. OpenAI appears to be in the midst of a months-long revolt from within. The latest flash point came yesterday, when a group of 11 current and former employees—plus two from other firms—issued a public letter declaring that leading AI… Continue Reading
Identifying and characterizing superspreaders of low-credibility content on Twitter
DeVerna MR, Aiyappa R, Pacheco D, Bryden J, Menczer F (2024) Identifying and characterizing superspreaders of low-credibility content on Twitter. PLoS ONE 19(5): e0302201. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0302201: “The world’s digital information ecosystem continues to struggle with the spread of misinformation. Prior work has suggested that users who consistently disseminate a disproportionate amount of low-credibility content—so-called superspreaders—are at… Continue Reading
DuckDuckGo Now Lets You Talk to AI Anonymously
Lifehacker: “Chatting with AI has proven to be a bit of a privacy risk as of late, with Meta admitting that it trains its AI by using your conversations with it (among other material posted to its services). Now, privacy-focused search engine and browser company DuckDuckGo is officially giving users a way to claw back… Continue Reading
Notable People
Notable people – “Using data from Morgane Laouenan et al., the map is showing birthplaces of the most “notable people” around the world. Data has been processed to show only one person for each unique geographic location with the highest notability rank. Click below to show people only from a specific category. Made by Topi… Continue Reading
This Hacker Tool Extracts All the Data Collected by Windows’ New Recall AI
Wired [unpaywalled]: “When Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella revealed the new Windows AI tool that can answer questions about your web browsing and laptop use, he said one of the “magical” things about it was that the data doesn’t leave your laptop; the Windows Recall system takes screenshots of your activity every five seconds and saves… Continue Reading
ChatGPT: Everything you need to know about the AI-powered chatbot
TechCrunch: “ChatGPT, OpenAI’s text-generating AI chatbot, has taken the world by storm. What started as a tool to hyper-charge productivity through writing essays and code with short text prompts has evolved into a behemoth used by more than 92% of Fortune 500 companies for more wide-ranging needs. And that growth has propelled OpenAI itself into… Continue Reading
Close City
“Close.city – “Proximity governs how we live, work, and socialize. Close is an interactive travel time map for people who want to be near the amenities that matter most to them. Close builds on two core principles: Different people will prioritize being near different amenities A neighborhood is only as accessible as its most distant… Continue Reading
The New Generation of Online Culture Curators
The New Yorker [unpaywalled]: “In a digital landscape overrun by algorithms and A.I., we need human guides to help us decide what’s worth paying attention. The current Internet landscape sometimes feels like the Zone in Andrei Tarkovsky’s film “Stalker”: directionless, inexplicable, bound to change in confusing ways. Our social-media feeds don’t offer much except the… Continue Reading
