Tag Archives: United States

03Mar/23

Snooping on campaigners

By Kim Harrisberg | South Africa correspondent

From phishing traps to arrests based on their social media posts alone, activists from Russia to Uganda say they’re increasingly being watched for their online campaigning.
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17Feb/23

Kids’ online safety: A fragile balance

By Samuel Woodhams | Digital rights researcher and journalist

Last week, Joe Biden sounded the alarm over the lack of child protections online during his State of the Union address. He called for a ban on the collection of kids’ personal data and the prohibition of targeted advertising to children, saying: “We must finally hold social media companies accountable for the experiment they are running on our children for profit.”
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11Feb/23

Faeces, urine and sweat – just how gross are hot tubs? A microbiologist explains

Primrose Freestone, University of Leicester

For many centuries we have bathed in communal waters. Sometimes for cleanliness but more often for pleasure. Indeed, in ancient Greece, baths were taken in freshwater, or sometimes the sea – which was thought of as a sacred place dedicated to local gods and so was considered an act of worship.

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05Feb/23

A Black history primer on African Americans’ fight for equality – 5 essential reads

Howard Manly, The Conversation

As the father of Black history, Carter G. Woodson had a simple goal – to legitimize the study of African American history and culture.

To that end, in 1912, shortly after becoming the second African American after W.E.B. Du Bois to earn a Ph.D. at Harvard, Woodson founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History in 1915.

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30Jan/23

“DAYS OF PUNK,” Photographer MICHAEL GRECCO’s Exhibition chronicling Punk Music & Culture opens Feb. 4 at MOAH:CEDAR

DOP_Presentation_4K_Main_20221017.mp4 from Michael Grecco on Vimeo.

Michael Grecco’s touring multimedia exhibition “DAYS OF PUNK” makes its west coast debut on February 4, presenting photographs from the late 1970s through the early 1990s when he was covering the explosive punk music scene in the U.S., as well as related videos, soundscapes and vintage ephemera. An Associated Press photographer during that time, Grecco was also a self-described “club kid” who embedded himself into this revolutionary scene as both a chronicler and participant, capturing for posterity a riotously outspoken time in pop culture history. Continue reading

29Jan/23

Deepfakes: faces created by AI now look more real than genuine photos

Manos Tsakiris, Royal Holloway University of London

Even if you think you are good at analysing faces, research shows many people cannot reliably distinguish between photos of real faces and images that have been computer-generated. This is particularly problematic now that computer systems can create realistic-looking photos of people who don’t exist.

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27Jan/23

ChatGPT: why education should embrace the AI chatbot, not shun it

Brian Lucey, Trinity College Dublin and Michael Dowling, Dublin City University

Just under two months ago, the US artificial intelligence company OpenAI introduced a program called ChatGPT. Essentially an advanced chatbot, it has been the subject of much debate.

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24Jan/23

Prince Harry is wrong: unconscious bias is not different to racism

Meghan Tinsley, University of Manchester

When Prince Harry sat down with ITV journalist Tom Bradby for a conversation about his marriage, his estrangement from the royal family and his tell-all memoir, Spare, one particular segment stood out. Bradby said that Harry had accused some members of his family of racism, but Harry shook his head firmly.

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13Jan/23

2022 wasn’t the year of Cleopatra – so why was she the most viewed page on Wikipedia?

Taha Yasseri, University College Dublin

At the end of every year, I gather statistics on the most viewed Wikipedia articles of the year. This helps me, a computational social scientist, understand what topics captured the most attention and gives me a chance to reflect on the major public events of the year. I try to use data to determine how the public (and more specifically here, English-language Wikipedia readers) will collectively remember the past year.

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