By ResearchBuzz on June 5, 2024• ( Leave a comment )
NEW RESOURCES
This Is Colossal: ‘The Hydrant Directory’ Catalogs the Color Palettes of Community-Painted Infrastructure. “The Hydrant Directory catalogs dozens of unconventional color palettes found on the plugs, to use hydrant industry jargon. Started by Day Lane in May 2023, the archive indexes the coordinates and postal code of each entry, along with the height and date added. Most are located in Brooklyn, with a few additions from cities like Seattle and Syracuse, and users can sort the hydrants by color, size, location, and more.”
TWEAKS AND UPDATES
The Verge: A new Google Maps layer shows public restrooms in NYC. “There’s no elegant way to say this: going to the bathroom in New York is a nightmare. Public restrooms in the city are hard to find and are often either out of order or require you to buy something at a store or café to be able to use. The problem is so bad that individuals have created their own resources for finding public restrooms. A new Google Maps layer introduced by the city attempts to tackle this issue.”
9to5 Google: Google Assistant continues to crumble in the ‘Gemini era’. “Back in 2016, Google Assistant was a huge deal. The voice assistant promised to bring the power of Google Search to smart speakers and your phone’s assistant, and it was impressive. At the time, Assistant was doing things that were legitimately compelling and new. And, even down to today, many of those features are still incredibly useful. But, over time, Google Assistant has felt as though it’s actively degrading.”
Religion News Service: SBC abuse reform task force ends its work with no names on database and no long-term plan. “A volunteer Southern Baptist task force charged with implementing abuse reforms in the nation’s largest Protestant denomination will end its work next week without a single name published on a database of abusers.”
AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD
The Guardian: Elon Musk does not grasp EU fears about disinformation on X, official says. “Speaking just days before the European parliamentary elections, in which disinformation, particularly Russian-backed propaganda, has been a key issue, Věra Jourová criticised what she said was a clear deterioration in content moderation on X since Musk bought the platform in 2022.”
ABC4 Utah: Google fixes ‘Utah’ navigation issue after worst incident yet. “The sheriff’s office said it has contacted Google about the issue approximately 40 times over the past years and even placed signs on the road warning motorists not to proceed if they were following Google Maps to ‘Utah’ or if they were not equipped for the terrain.”
CNBC: Google cuts at least 100 jobs across fast-growing cloud unit, sources say. “The company notified employees last week of the cloud cuts, with roles being eliminated in sales, consulting, ‘go-to-market’ strategy, operations and engineering, according to internal correspondence viewed by CNBC. At least 100 positions were cut, said people familiar with the matter who asked not to be named because they weren’t authorized to speak about the layoffs.”
SECURITY & LEGAL
ABC News: TikTok says cyberattack targeted CNN and other ‘high-profile accounts’. “TikTok said Tuesday it has taken steps to stop a cyberattack targeting high-profile accounts, including one belonging to CNN.”
404 Media: Google Leak Reveals Thousands of Privacy Incidents. “Google has accidentally collected childrens’ voice data, leaked the trips and home addresses of car pool users, and made YouTube recommendations based on users’ deleted watch history, among thousands of other employee-reported privacy incidents, according to a copy of an internal Google database which tracks six years worth of potential privacy and security issues obtained by 404 Media.”
CNN: States begin to push back on book bans – by banning them. “As a record number of school districts face bans on certain books and lawmakers enact measures that limit what can be taught about race and sexual identity in the classroom, some states are moving to counter the measures with laws that prohibit banning books.”
RESEARCH & OPINION
Stony Brook University: Study Looks to Distinguish Between Human and AI-Generated Content. “Even though Generative AI tools like ChatGPT and Claude have only been around for a couple of years, the content they create is so good in quality that it’s often indistinguishable from text written by humans. What’s more, apart from being used for daily tasks and language translation, these AI models are also learning about human nature by comparing their own outputs to human-generated content. So how do we differentiate between human and AI-generated content? According to Vasudha Varadarajan, a PhD student and research assistant at Stony Brook, the approach needs to be different from current methods.”
Techdirt: Dear Google: If You’re Going To Let Google News Suck, Just Let It Die Instead. “Google owns this product and it used to work just fine. The steady decline of the platform into the realm of malfunction, nevermind full or partial outages, is a problem that Google is simply failing to address or communicate about. So, Google: if you no longer care enough about Google News to support it so that it actually works, then say so and let it die so we can all go find a different resource for what is absolutely a need.” Good morning, Internet…
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