Gizmodo: Snap Is Doing What Twitter Can’t. “As Elon Musk threatens to charge all users with a monthly subscription to access Twitter, Snap is seeing a userbase more willing to pay to use the perks of its platform. Snap’s membership service Snapchat+ has reached a whopping 5 million users, which is officially halfway to its goal of 10 million.”
Engadget: Windows’ Copilot AI starts rolling out September 26. “Microsoft announced that its Copilot AI, which currently exists in various iterations in the Edge browser, Microsoft 365 platform and Windows, will be bundled into a single, unified and ubiquitous generative AI assistant across all of Microsoft’s products — from Powerpoint to Teams.”
Analytics India: Google is Officially Killing the Internet with AI. ” In the latest iteration of the company’s ‘Helpful Content Update’, the phrase ‘written by people’ has been replaced by a statement that search giant is constantly monitoring ‘content created for people’ to rank sites on its search engine. The linguistic pivot shows that the company does recognise the significant impact AI tools have on content creation. Despite prior declarations of intentions to distinguish between AI and human-authored content, with this move, it appears that the company is contradicting its own stance on the omnipresent AI-generated material on the internet.”
The Guardian: Apple removes app created by Andrew Tate. “McCue Jury & Partners, the firm representing four British women who have accused Tate of sexual and physical assault, claimed that the app deliberately targets young men and encourages misogyny, including members of the app sharing techniques on how to control and exploit women. The firm has also claimed that there is evidence to suggest that the app is an illegal pyramid scheme, with members being charged $49.99 a month to join.”
Reuters: With TikToks, memes and Musk comments, Argentina election battle goes viral. “In a high-rise office in downtown Buenos Aires, a loose band of twenty-something influencers gather to plan how to propel Javier Milei to the Argentine presidency with TikTok videos, memes – and some help from Elon Musk.”
WIRED: How ChatGPT Can Help You Do More With PDFs. “THE GENERATIVE AI bot ChatGPT has been busy helping writers, debating issues, generating code, and more—and now that developer OpenAI has opened the door to third-party plug-ins, a ton of new functionality is available. These plug-ins can look up information on the web, draw diagrams, manage travel plans, interrogate Wikipedia, and more. To access the various plug-ins, you need an active, $20-per-month subscription to ChatGPT Plus. Here we’ll focus on one particular type of extension: PDF plug-ins.”
Texas A&M Today: Texas A&M-Led Humanities Project Seeks To Preserve An Endangered Language. “Texas A&M University historian Dr. Daniel Schwartz has devoted the last decade of his professional life to preserving the past — specifically, the culture of a 2,000-year-old language known as Syriac. He and likeminded colleagues from around the world have been working across place, time and cyberspace to safeguard Syriac cultural heritage, painstakingly creating Syriaca.org, a cyberinfrastructure to link Syriac literature to their persons, places, manuscripts and key concepts.”
Baptist Press: Paying for X (Twitter)? Churches, pastors consider the cost. “Churches tend to focus their social media presence on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. Accounts on X exist, but generally lag in activity compared to those of pastors and other church leaders. And even for the latter two categories, the way X is used makes a difference as to the need to pay for it. It literally becomes a case of the cost being worth … well, the cost.”
Washington State University: WSU students create database to accelerate skin science. “The website — skinregeneration.org — was created for researchers but allows anyone to cross-compare information on more than 33,000 genes from different species as they relate to skin development, wound repair, and regeneration. Ultimately, it could help scientists reprogram adult skin for regeneration during wound healing and to inhibit the aging process.”
TechCrunch: Mastodon’s latest release makes the open source Twitter alternative easier to use. “As changes at Elon Musk’s X continue to push former Twitter users to seek alternatives, the open source, decentralized social network Mastodon — a popular Twitter/X rival — is releasing an update designed to make it easier for users to get started, use its network even when logged out, and more easily search for content across its platform. The web interface has also received a visual refresh and a number of other improvements.”
The Hill: Biden campaign launches strategy to combat misinformation on social media. “President Biden’s reelection campaign is creating a working group centered on combating misinformation on social media networks, a Biden campaign official told The Hill on Wednesday. The group will be led by Rob Flaherty, deputy campaign manager; Michael Tyler, communications director; and Maury Riggan, general counsel, as well as aides from the rapid response communications team and legal team.”
BBC: AI-generated naked child images shock Spanish town of Almendralejo. “A sleepy town in southern Spain is in shock after it emerged that AI-generated naked images of young local girls had been circulating on social media without their knowledge. The pictures were created using photos of the targeted girls fully clothed, many of them taken from their own social media accounts.”
Ubergizmo: Blackmagic Introduces Free iPhone Video App For Pro-Level Filming. “Blackmagic Design, renowned for its high-end digital movie cameras and video editing software, has introduced a free iPhone app designed for advanced video shooting, one that caters to users seeking enhanced creative control over video capture on their iPhones. The app’s interface is touted to be as user-friendly as the company’s award-winning cameras, making it an attractive choice for professionals and enthusiasts alike. Users gain comprehensive control over critical settings like frame rate, shutter speed, white balance, and ISO.”
New York Times: Google Says Switching Away From Its Search Engine Is Easy. It’s Not.. “I decided to test how easy or hard it really is to switch to a different search engine. In a blog post this month, Google said the change was a straightforward process and offered three examples… So I followed Google’s instructions and also shared the company’s guidance with a panel of three design veterans. The verdict: It’s hard to switch — and most people would probably give up before completing the change.”
Washington Post: Misinformation research is buckling under GOP legal attacks. “Academics, universities and government agencies are overhauling or ending research programs designed to counter the spread of online misinformation amid a legal campaign from conservative politicians and activists who accuse them of colluding with tech companies to censor right-wing views.” The link is to a gift article so you should be able to read it without paywall.
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