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Category Archives: Search Engines

How I use Mastodon in 2025

Three Things to Know by Fred Rocha: “These are exciting times to be on Mastodon, one of the flavours of the Fediverse. Things are evolving fast, towards a space worthy of healthier online debate and exchange. Some of these conversations can be found on my own profile, if you’re curious. Here are some of the cool things I have discovered Mastodon lets you do. If you’ve found some neat integrations or solutions, please do let me know in the comments. I am curious.

  • So, given that Mastodon does not have an Algorithm to keep you hooked on the platform, you are in control of what you read. If you decide not to drink from the firehose — sorted chronologically — of all the posts of all your followers, you can use Lists. With Lists you can maintain a group of people that usually write on a specific topic, or simply those whose posts you deem more relevant…”

50 Free Datasets in 50 Minutes

50 Free Datasets in 50 Minutes. National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting. Minneapolis, Minnesota, March 6, 2025: “Below are federal government datasets with individual-level structured data that can be downloaded for free as Excel or CSV files and localized to any city, county or state in the United States. Unless noted, all the data is updated… Continue Reading

Punishing AI doesn’t stop it from lying and cheating it just makes it hide better, study shows

Live Science: “Punishing artificial intelligence for deceptive or harmful actions doesn’t stop it from misbehaving; it just makes it hide its deviousness, a new study by ChatGPT creator OpenAI has revealed. Since arriving in public in late 2022, artificial intelligence (AI) large language models (LLMs) have repeatedly revealed their deceptive and outright sinister capabilities. These… Continue Reading

Fed Layoffs

“A caring community resource to help federal employees navigate their next chapter. You’re not alone in this journey. A community resource created to support federal employees affected by workforce reductions.” Links to: Career Resources; Support Services; Legal Help; Healthcare Jobs; Corporate Jobs; Additional Jobs. Continue Reading

AI search engines fail accuracy test, study finds 60% error rate

TechSpot: “In context: It is a foregone conclusion that AI models can lack accuracy. Hallucinations and doubling down on wrong information have been an ongoing struggle for developers. Usage varies so much in individual use cases that it’s hard to nail down quantifiable percentages related to AI accuracy. A research team claims it now has… Continue Reading

ERIC – Institute of Education Sciences

“ERIC is a comprehensive, easy-to-use, searchable, Internet-based bibliographic and full-text database of education research and information. It is sponsored by the Institute of Education Sciences within the U.S. Department of Education. For a brief overview, access the video. ERIC has five main user groups: academics, researchers, educators, policymakers, and the general public. Access our Who… Continue Reading

The largest collection of Free stuff on the Internet

“While it’s self-proclaimed, it’s easy to believe that this is the largest collection of links to free sites on the internet” [Free]. All searchable, the content spans AI, Discord, Privacy, Gaming, Movies, TV, Anime, Sports, Music, Podcasts, Radio, Books, Comics, Manga, Downloading, Torrenting, Educational, Android, iOS, Linux, MacOS, Non-english….” Continue Reading

Signal President Meredith Whittaker calls out agentic AI as having ‘profound’ security and privacy issues

TechCrunch: “Signal President Meredith Whittaker warned Friday that agentic AI could come with a risk to user privacy. Speaking onstage at the SXSW conference in Austin, Texas, the advocate for secure communications referred to the use of AI agents as “putting your brain in a jar,” and cautioned that this new paradigm of computing — where… Continue Reading

We Compared Eight AI Search Engines. They’re All Bad at Citing News.

Columbia Journalism Review: “AI search tools are rapidly gaining in popularity, with nearly one in four Americans now saying they have used AI in place of traditional search engines. These tools derive their value from crawling the internet for up-to-date, relevant information—content that is often produced by news publishers.  Yet a troubling imbalance has emerged:… Continue Reading

How to spot AI slop on Pinterest and why it’s such a big problem

ZDNet: “For years, Pinterest has been dubbed the go-to social media site for inspirational mood boards, tracking lifestyle, fashion, and beauty trends, and finding niche and popular consumer-based products. Recently, however, the site has been plagued with an onslaught of AI slop, making it difficult for users to decipher what’s real, human-made content or fake.… Continue Reading

Archivists Recreate Pre-Trump CDC Website, Are Hosting It in Europe

404 Media: “The team used a Reddit-made archive of the CDC website to create a new live mirror of the site before it was purged. A team of volunteer archivists has recreated the Centers for Disease Control website exactly as it was the day Donald Trump was inaugurated. The site, called RestoredCDC.org, went live Tuesday… Continue Reading