Accurate, Focused Research on Law, Technology and Knowledge Discovery With Daily Postings Since 2002
Lifehacker: “Face it: with the competition spending hundreds of millions of dollars on it, Google’s recent foray into AI isn’t going to stop anytime soon. While you can hide Google Workspace’s Gemini buttons and prompts for now, you can’t actually stop the company from continuing to build its apps around a technology that revolves around …
Kottke.org: Professor Christina Pagel of University College London has mapped the actions of the Trump administration’s first few weeks into a Venn diagram (above) with “five broad domains that correspond to features of proto-authoritarian states”: Undermining Democratic Institutions & Rule of Law; Dismantling federal government Dismantling Social Protections & Rights; Enrichment & Corruption Suppressing Dissent …
The Verge: “As Elon Musk and President Donald Trump have sought to gut and remake the federal government to their liking, federal workers have changed how they communicate with one another and with friends. They have locked down communication channels, migrated to new platforms, and what was once skepticism has grown into deep distrust — …
Ars Technica: “Condé Nast and several other media companies sued the AI startup Cohere today, alleging that it engaged in “systematic copyright and trademark infringement” by using news articles to train its large language model. “Without permission or compensation, Cohere uses scraped copies of our articles, through training, real-time use, and in outputs, to power …
Metals in Wildfire Suppressants. Marella H. Schammel, Samantha J. Gold, and Daniel L. McCurry. Environ. Sci. Technol. Lett. 2024, 11, 11, 1247-1253. Open Access Publication Date (Web): October 30, 2024. Pages 1136-1259. ABSTRACT: Frequent and severe wildfires have led to increased application of fire suppression products (long-term fire retardants, water enhancers, and Class A foams) …
Lifehacker: “Bluesky is setting itself up to be a social media jack of all trades. There’s the main experience, of course, which replaces something like X or Threads. But it’s not all about the text posts: Soon, you’ll be able to use an app like Flashes to transform Bluesky into a kind of Instagram. Before …
IT Brew: “Federal agencies are having a Rear Window moment, but they don’t know who’s behind the binoculars.On Jan. 15, Google began rolling out an update to its Workspace utility suite that turned on its AI assistant, Gemini. For some companies—including Morning Brew—this update arrived without warning and required IT staff to disable the feature. …
“USAspending.gov links data from many government systems, including agency financial systems and governmentwide award systems. Scroll below to learn more about these systems, as well as the context for this historic initiative to provide federal spending transparency.” Try searching for contracts by vendor name such as AWS, Inc., Space Exploration Technologies Corp., Tesla Laboratories, Inc. …
“Explore the Internet Archive’s vast collection through time. Discover historical content, including books, videos, software, and more, all with visual representations. Random content from all years and types.” Powered by Internet Archive Select Year (Optional) Content Type (Optional) Select Mode (Optional)
“The primary goal of the Essential Vermeer website is to harness the extraordinary potential of the internet to provide a comprehensive and organic presentation of Vermeer’s art, life, and cultural milieu. Complex art historical issues are made accessible to casual art lovers while retaining their relevance for scholars and experts. News of Vermeer-related exhibitions, publications, …
Josh Marshall: “This new EO signed today appears to create DOGE as a shadow government across the entire federal government. Each agency/dept will be assigned a DOGE minder who will work with the Secry or Director and essentially be in charge of all new hiring and/or firing. People have been saying the Elon is President. …
The New Yorker – unpaywalled – “To run his agency [DOGE], Musk brought on a group of tech-company managers and inexperienced twentysomethings whose credentials included internships at SpaceX. We watched as this crew began interrogating federal employees about their jobs, interfering with the system that controls payments at the Treasury Department, and trawling government budgets …
