An anonymous reader quotes the Huffington Post: Six months ago, under tremendous public pressure, YouTube announced that it would tweak its algorithm to recommend fewer videos “that could misinform users in harmful ways.” It was a major step for a company that has spent years driving people toward increasingly sensationalist content — including dangerous disinformation — that would keep viewers glued…
Tag: Pages
Astronomy educators to rendezvous in Chile
Members of the Astronomy in Chile Educator Ambassadors Program are heading to Chile for a tour of its great observatories, July 27 to August 5, 2019. Source: https://earthsky.org/human-world/astronomy-educators-to-rendezvous-in-chile…
A New Report Documents Two Years of Science Being Scrubbed From .Gov Sites
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: A report published by the Environmental Data & Governance Initiative (EDGI) on Monday found that language related to climate change has disappeared at an alarming pace since Trump took office in 2016. Across 5,301 pages — ranging from websites belonging to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) –…
Kazakhstan Government is Now Intercepting All HTTPS Traffic
Artem S. Tashkinov writes: Starting Wednesday, July 17, 2019, the Kazakhstan government has started intercepting all HTTPS internet traffic inside its borders. Local internet service providers (ISPs) have been instructed by the local government to force their respective users into installing a government-issued certificate on all devices, and in every browser. The certificate, once installed, will allow local government agencies to…
The eclipse that marked the start of the Iroquois Confederacy
The total solar eclipse of August 22, 1142 may have coincided with the birth of the Iroquois Confederacy, oldest democracy in North America and possibly on Earth. Source: https://earthsky.org/human-world/solar-eclipse-marks-beginning-of-iroquois-confederacy…
Uranus, Neptune, Pluto: A longer view
Astronomer Guy Ottewell talks about his awesome book about some of our solar system’s most beloved outer worlds. As always, he provides the best charts anywhere! Source: https://earthsky.org/astronomy-essentials/ottewell-uranus-neptune-pluto-longer-view…
Alibaba Claims New Record in AI Language Understanding
An AI program developed by Alibaba has notched up a record-high score on a reading comprehension test. The result shows how machines are steadily improving at handling text and speech. From a report: The new record was set using the Microsoft Machine Reading Comprehension (MS MARCO) data set, which uses real questions that Bing users have asked in the past. The…
Google Tweaked Algorithm After Rise In US Shootings
A senior search engineer at Google revealed that the company had to tweak its algorithm to combat misinformation after mass shootings. The Guardian reports: “In these last few years, there’s been a tragic increase in shootings,” Pandu Nayak, who joined the company 14 years ago to work on its search engine, said. “And it turns out that during these shootings, in…
Facebook Abused To Spread Remote Access Trojans Since 2015
An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: Facebook has been exploited to act as a distribution platform for a set of Remote Access Trojans (RATs) for years, researchers say. According to Check Point Research, a “large-scale” campaign has been operating under Facebook’s radar since at least 2014 throughout a campaign related to politics in Libya. The aim of the operation…