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And why you shouldn’t trust product recommendations from big media publishers ranking at the top of Google. “Google regularly launches updates to its algorithm to continuously improve search results quality. Think of these updates as a refresh of the system where rankings change: some websites see an improvement while others see a decline. At HouseFresh, …
The Rise of Techno-Authoritarianism by Adrienne LaFrance [The Atlantic; read free] “Silicon Valley still attracts many immensely talented people who strive to do good, and who are working to realize the best possible version of a more connected, data-rich global society. Even the most deleterious companies have built some wonderful tools. But these tools, at scale, …
Ars Technica: “The day after The New York Times sued OpenAI for copyright infringement, the author and systems architect Daniel Jeffries wrote an essay-length tweet arguing that the Times “has a near zero probability of winning” its lawsuit. As we write this, it has been retweeted 288 times and received 885,000 views. “Trying to get …
Kyle Hull, Clarisse Warren, Kevin Smith. Politics makes bastards of us all: Why moral judgment is politically situational [full text free to read]. Political Psychology, 2024; DOI: 10.1111/pops.12954 – “Moral judgment is politically situational—people are more forgiving of transgressive copartisans and more likely to behave punitively and unethically toward political opponents. Such differences are widely observed, …
Is Google Getting Worse? A Longitudinal Investigation of SEO Spam in Search Engines. Janek Bevendorff, Matti Wiegmann, Martin Potthast, and Benno Stein.”Many users of web search engines have been complaining in recent years about the supposedly decreasing quality of search results. This is often attributed to an increasing amount of search-engine-optimized but low-quality content. Evidence …
Via Kottke – The U.S. Census Is Wrong on Purpose: “…Full census data is only made available 72 years after the census takes place, in accordance with the creatively-named “72 year rule.” Until then, it is only available as aggregated data with individual identifiers removed. Still, if the population of a town is small enough, …
Fast Company: “You’ve probably already noticed your search engines are starting to evolve. Google and Bing have already added both AI-generated results and conversational chatbots to their respective search engines. The Browser Company, a startup that made a big early splash thanks to its mission statement of building a better internet browser, has launched an …
Science Daily: “Smiling for just a split second makes people more likely to see happiness in expressionless faces, new University of Essex research has revealed. The study led by Dr Sebastian Korb, from the Department of Psychology, shows that even a brief weak grin makes faces appear more joyful. The pioneering experiment used electrical stimulation …
Make Use Of: “Key Takeaways To edit a PDF in Microsoft Word, convert the PDF to a Word document to freely edit it, then save it as a PDF again. To edit PDFs in Microsoft Edge, import the PDF and use the tools to add text, highlight, comment, and annotate, then save the edited PDF. …
Data is Plural: “The National Wetlands Inventory, maintained by the US Fish and Wildlife Service, provides interactive maps and bulk data containing “geospatially referenced information on the status, extent, characteristics and functions of wetland, riparian, deepwater, and related aquatic habitats.” With contributions from 160+ organizations, coordinated through a dedicated national standard, the inventory represents “more …
“The Dignity Index scores distinct phrases along an eight-point scale from contempt to dignity. Lower scores (1-4) reflect divisive language while higher scores (5-8) reflect language grounded in dignity. In its pilot season, a trained group of students supported by the University of Utah’s Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute and the Hinckley Institute of Politics …
404 Media [free reg req’d]: “Facebook is awash with scams that direct visitors to fake live streams of funeral services, preying on relatives and friends of the deceased when they might be at their most vulnerable, 404 Media has found. The scams involve pulling details of real deceased people from legitimate funeral services pages and …