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404 Media: “Conservative parents’ advocacy groups have been experimenting with using commercially available artificial intelligence tools to help them flag more books they’ve deemed pornographic to be removed from public schools and libraries. Even though LLMs are notoriously error-prone, and the books in question aren’t pornographic, these groups continue to explore use cases for AI …
The New York Times Gift Article: “The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has temporarily paused testing for rabies and pox viruses, the family of viruses that includes smallpox and mpox, according to an update to the agency’s website on Monday. The C.D.C. offers testing for dozens of pathogens to assist state and local public …
Flowing Data By Nathan Yau – “I recently attended a retirement party, and the retiree was calling it a day after 50 years. She graduated college, found a job she enjoyed, and stuck with it for a very long time. This is not common, right? The Current Population Survey asks people how many years they …
Heatwave risk, down to your block: the new tool making it visible – “Cities around the world are increasingly exposed to extreme heat, which poses serious risks to public health, infrastructure and livability. However, many cities struggle to plan and implement effective cooling interventions due to limited access to relevant, localized data and a lack …
ZDNET – “This free privacy tool gave me answers. Data is gold, and some companies go to great lengths to collect it, store it, and sell it. But you can put an end to it. [Note – sort of] There’s a service called Global Privacy Control that offers extensions and/or links to browsers and apps …
Android Authority: here’s how to do it. “A wide rollout in the US brings the long-awaited ability to refresh your digital identity without losing any of your data…Users in the US can go to their Google Account settings (navigate to any Google website or app like Gmail, tap the profile photo in the top-right corner, …
404 Media: “Thomson Reuters, the media company which is also a data broker, has long provided underlying personal data for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) tools, according to documents obtained by 404 Media and sources. There are also indications its data is now part of the Palantir system ICE uses to find which neighborhoods to …
The Parnas Perspective: “President Donald Trump…signed an executive order restricting mail-in voting, including requiring a federal list of verified eligible voters and limiting ballot distribution to those on the list. The move is part of his long-standing push to curb mail voting following the 2020 election, though critics warn it could disenfranchise millions and face …
ProPublica: “In the first days after Pam Bondi was appointed attorney general last year, the Department of Justice began shutting down pending criminal cases at a record pace. The cases included an investigation into a Virginia nursing home with a recent record of patient abuse; probes of fraud involving several New Jersey labor unions, including …
MakeUseOf: “I treat Bluetooth like a light switch. I turn it off when I don’t need it, and assume it’s gone. You did too, right? Turns out, we’re wrong. When you’re not actively connected to anything, your phone is still talking, constantly, to anyone nearby set up to listen. Your Bluetooth signal isn’t really turned …
Washington Post [no paywall]: “A committee led by the interior secretary known as the “God Squad” voted Tuesday to exempt oil and gas companies from complying with the Endangered Species Act when drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, a move expected to threaten Rice’s whale and other species with extinction. Meeting for the first time …
MIT Technology Review: “Specialized chatbots might make a difference for people with limited health-care access. Without more testing, we don’t know if they’ll help or harm.”