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An Ars Technica history of the Internet, part 1 – “In our new 3-part series, we remember the people and ideas that made the Internet. In a very real sense, the Internet, this marvelous worldwide digital communications network that you’re using right now, was created because one man was annoyed at having too many computer …
WSJ via MSN: “The Smithsonian is conducting a thorough review of all of its content in its 21 museums and zoo to eliminate political influence and bias, a move that could have far-reaching consequences for the nation’s flagship art and research institution. The decision by the Smithsonian’s Board of Regents in a closed-door meeting on …
Wired + 404 Media: “A contract obtained by 404 Media shows that an airline-owned data broker forbids the feds from revealing it sold them detailed passenger data. A data broker owned by the country’s major airlines, including Delta, American Airlines, and United, collected US travelers’ domestic flight records, sold access to them to Customs and …
Tara Calishain – “As you might imagine, I do a lot of web search in the course of my day. Often these queries are quick reference lookups; I need to find a company’s social media, for example, or I want to see how to spell someone’s name. Unfortunately these kinds of searches on Google are …
Fast Company: “The First and Second amendments are the rock stars of the Bill of Rights. Everybody knows about them, even if they’re not always big fans, and they frequently pop up in national discourse. The Third Amendment, on the other hand, is more like the Yngwie Malmsteen of the Bill of Rights. Much like …
Likehacker: “We’re living in a post-privacy world. Every time you leave the house you’re probably on camera. Every time you turn on your television, your viewing habits are being logged. And using the internet in any way is basically just spraying a firehose of your personal information at data brokers—companies that compile your personal information …
Axios: “President Trump quietly took a red pen to much of the Biden administration’s in a little-noticed move late Friday. Why it matters: Until now, it has been unclear which Biden-era cybersecurity policies the Trump administration would keep — if any. Cybersecurity is a rare bipartisan area. It’s pretty common for new administrations to keep …
WSJ – no paywall: “The AI armageddon is here for online news publishers. Chatbots are replacing Google searches, eliminating the need to click on blue links and tanking referrals to news sites. As a result, traffic that publishers relied on for years is plummeting. Traffic from organic search to HuffPost’s desktop and mobile websites fell …
“Duck.ai is a free feature that allows you to have private conversations with 3rd-party AI chat models, anonymized by us. It currently supports Anthropic’s Claude 3 Haiku, Meta’s Llama 3.3 70B, Mistral AI’s Mistral Small 3 24B, and OpenAI’s GPT-4o mini. Each model relies on unique algorithms and datasets and will respond to your prompts …
Make Use Of – (and How to Get Rid of It): “If you’ve ever wondered how Google seems to read your mind, the answer lies in its massive and incredibly detailed data collection. You can actually take a look at what Google knows about you—and delete it if you want to clean the slate. It’s …
MindWar: The Psychological War on Democracy – “As tanks are sent en masse to the nation’s capital, complete with revolutionary insignia, for a propaganda event this Saturday, one of the president’s top advisors is accusing the government of the State of California of aiding and abetting “an invasion”—a condition for a charge of treason—while the …
CRS Legal Sidebar – Supreme Court Grants Emergency Motion on President’s Removal Power, June 4, 2025: “On May 22, 2025, the Supreme Court granted the executive branch’s motion to stay lower court orders reinstating officials at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) who enjoy statutory removal protections. Over the …
