The company that shaped the development of search engines is banking on chatbot-style summaries. But so far, its suggestions are pretty wild

Once upon a time, Google was great. For those who were online in 1998, history’s timeline bifurcated into two eras: BG (Before Google), and AG. It was elegant and clean: elegant because it was driven by a semi-objective algorithm called PageRank, which ranked websites according to how many other websites linked to them; and clean because it had no advertising, which of course also meant that it had no business model and accordingly was burning its way through its investors’ money.

It was too good to last, and of course it didn’t. Two of its biggest investors showed up one day, demanding a return on their investments. The company’s co-founders had an idea. One of the reasons theirs was such a good search engine was that they intensively monitored what people searched for, and then used that information continually to improve the engine’s performance. Their big idea was that the information thus derived had a commercial value; it indicated what people were interested in and might therefore be of value to advertisers who wanted to sell them stuff. Thus was born what Shoshana Zuboff christened “surveillance capitalism”, the dominant money machine of the networked world.

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© Photograph: Thomas Jackson/Getty Images

Google appears to have turned off its new A.I. Overviews for a number of searches as it works to minimize errors.

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Since Google overhauled its search engine, publishers have tried to assess the danger to their brittle business models while calling for government intervention.

© Jason Henry for The New York Times

Leaked Documents Reveal How Google Search Gatekeeps the Internet This week, a 2,500-page leak, first reported by search engine optimization (SEO) veteran Rand Fishkin, gave the world an insight into the 26-year-old mystery of Google Search.

Servo, the Rust-based browser engine originally started by Mozilla but since spun off into an entity under the umbrella of the Linux Foundation, has published another monthly update. As almost every month, there’s been a lot of progress on rendering tech I don’t quite understand, and further improved support for various standards. Another major focus is the ongoing font system rework, which is yielding not only vastly improved support for font rendering options, but is also reducing the memory load.

The example browser included in Servo is also making progress, from reducing the amount of errors on Windows, to implementing support for using extra mouse buttons to go back and forward, and showing the link desination when hovering the mouse over a link.

The Tesla chief executive is taking to his social media company to press shareholders to vote for a critical pay package on June 13.

© Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times

It's not just you: Google search is getting worse. It's more than the annoying new AI box at the top of the results page, which takes a long time to load and tends to spout nonsense. It's also that the overall quality of search results seems to have declined over time, even as promoted results and ads take up more of the user interface.

But despite the search giant's omnipresence, you aren't stuck with Google. There are a number of alternative search engines out there. None are perfect, but each has positives that make them worth considering. Here are five alternatives that will satisfy most people. And remember: You don't need to switch to relying entirely on one of them. In fact, it's probably best to try out a few different options, and even continue use different search engines for different purposes going forward.

DuckDuckGo

DuckDuckGo is the longest standing privacy-oriented alternative to Google, and it remains one of the best in terms of features. The service is free, relying on ad revenue, but that ads are based entirely on what you're searching right at this moment—that is, there's no long-term tracking following you between search sessions.

I, a huge nerd, love that you can browse your search results entirely using the keyboard—just type something in the search bar, use the up and down arrow keys to jump to any selection on the results page, and hit "Enter" to open it. Then there are bangs, which allow you to search other sites directly from the DuckDuckGo search bar—for example, typing "!w" at the beginning of a query will launch the search in Wikipedia, bypassing DuckDuckGo entirely. There are over 13,000 of these shortcuts, useful for directly searching everything from Reddit to WolframAlpha.

The service has maintained a good reputation on the privacy front, at least in terms of the search engine itself; there has been some controversy involving the DuckDuckGo browser, which blocks most tracking but specifically not Microsoft's, because of an agreement between the two companies. Some users likewise aren't thrilled about the "Chat" tab, which integrates with OpenAI. Notably, though, AI recommendations don't come through in standard searches on DuckDuckGo.

Kagi

Kagi is a paid search engine with no ads whatsover. The subscription model, the theory goes, allows it to offer quality search results without any temptation on the part of the developers to water them down with ads. The engine has earned praise from the likes of Cory Doctorow and 404 Media's Jason Koebler, which isn't too shabby.

One feature people love is the ability to block matches from URLs you don't like from ever showing up in your search results, which is useful if you notice a particular website is consistently trash. There's also a tool for searching podcasts, which I haven't seen anywhere else. The main downside is that you have to pay. Plans start at $5/month, though that only gives you 300 searches. Unlimited search starts at $10/month. You can try the service for yourself and decide whether it's worth paying for—there's a free version, but it's limited to 100 total searches total.

There has been a bit of controversy around the company that's worth noting, mostly related to how the it is run, the around $2 million of investment money it recently took on after bragging about bootstrapping. Also, the CEO is being annoying about any criticism the company receives. That aside, the search engine itself seems to work well, so give it a shot if you're willing to pony up.

Brave

Brave Search is the search engine from the team behind the Brave browser, which is famous for coming with built-in ad blocking. It sets itself apart from DuckDuckGo by having its own search index, built from scratch (DuckDuckGo combines its own index with data from Bing and numerous other companies).

Brave also offers a Goggles feature, which allows you to use custom filters that boost or downgrade outlets based on factors like topic and political persuasion. I found some of this overly simplistic—most websites are not uniformly one thing—but you can check the code to see what's being factored into any Goggle, so it's all very transparent at least. There's also a built-in AI engine that's opt-in—just press up after typing your search query to enable the feature for a specific search. The main shortcoming, in my opinion, is that there's no maps feature whatsoever.

Brave's reputation is decent, though the CEO has a controversial history and the company has been accused of selling copyrighted data to train AI, so take all of that into account.

Ecosia

Ecosia is a free, ad-supported search engine that donates all of its profits toward climate action. They are very transparent about this—you can read through the financial reports yourself. The search itself is powered by Bing, and works fairly well.

Perplexity.ai

Perplexity is completely different beast. Instead of putting AI generated text at the top of results, it pretty much only offers AI generated text, with links serving as citations for all of the points made. You can ask a question and then a followup, which can be useful to refine your results, and clicking the citation gives you a few interesting links. I find that Perplexity seems to be better at spotting and understanding satire and jokes than Google's AI bot, though obviously you should test it out for yourself and see what comes back.

Obviously anyone who is concerned about AI shouldn't use Perplexity, and there are no doubt going to be privacy concerns for this browser in the long term—it has raised $165 million in venture capital, which isn't something that happens unless investors are expecting a massive return, and we all know where that kind of thing generally leads. For now, though, it's an interesting tool that doesn't have any ads, and it can be useful for some queries.

Or, use Google differently

If you don't want to give up on Google's search results but hate what the service has become, there are a few options. Startpage is a privacy-oriented service that uses Google's search index to deliver results without the tracking. There's also UDM14.com, a simple site that re-directs you to Google's web view. Both are URLs worth keeping bookmarking for those times when you still feel compelled to Google.

OpenAI released GPT-4o, its latest chatbot technology, in a partly finished state. It has much to prove.

© Arsenii Vaselenko for The New York Times

If you're not careful and you noclip out of reality in the wrong areas, you'll end up in the Backrooms, where it's nothing but the stink of old moist carpet, the madness of mono-yellow, the endless background noise of fluorescent lights at maximum hum-buzz, and approximately six hundred million square miles of randomly segmented empty rooms to be trapped in. God save you if you hear something wandering around nearby, because it sure as hell has heard you.

So stated an anonymous 2019 thread on 4chan's /x/ imageboard -- a potent encapsulation of liminal-space horror that gave rise to a complex mythos, exploratory video games, and an acclaimed web series (previously; soon to become a major motion picture from A24!). In the five years since, the evolving "Backrooms" fandom has canonized a number of other dreamlike settings, from CGI creations like The Poolrooms and a darkened suburb with wrong stars to real places like the interior atrium of Heathrow's Terminal 4 Holliday Inn and a shuttered Borders bookstore. But the image that inspired the founding text -- an anonymous photo of a vaguely unnerving yellow room -- remained a mystery... until now.

...turns out it's from a 2003 blog post about renovating for an RC car race track in Oshkosh! Not quite as fun a reveal as for certain other longstanding internet mysteries, but still satisfying, especially since it includes another equally-unsettling photo (and serendipitously refers to a "back room"). Also, due credit to Black August, the SomethingAwful goon who quietly claims to have written the original Backrooms text. Liminal spaces previously on MeFi:

Discussing the Kane Pixels production (plus an inspired-by series, A-Sync Research). Note that as the Backrooms movie takes shape, Kane is continuing work on an intriguing spiritual successor: The Oldest View The Eerie Comfort of Liminal Spaces A Twitter thread on being lost in a real-life Backrooms space Inside the world's largest underground shopping complex A 2010 post about Hondo, an enigmatic Half-Life map designer who incorporated "enormous hidden areas that in some cases dwarfed the actual level" MyHouse.WAD, a sprawling, reality-warping Doom mod that went viral last year AskMe: Seeking fiction books with labyrinths and other interminable buildings

My personal favorite liminal space: the unnervingly cheerful indoor playground KidsFun from '90s-era Tampa -- if only because I've actually been there as a kid (and talked about its eeriness on the blue before). Do you have any liminal spaces that have left an impression on you?

The England defender shares his life story, lessons and secrets to success in a new BBC series. Plus: five of the best tech podcasts

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“If fascism takes over your country, do you stay or do you try to flee?” David Modigliani opens this beautiful podcast about his family history with the question his Italian grandfather Franco faced. Modigliani reads love letters between his nonna Serena and Franco, learning about their escape to the US, where Franco won a Nobel prize. Then, executive producer Stanley Tucci brings great-grandfather Giulio into the story. Hannah Verdier

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Views: 0Source: www.infosecurity-magazine.com – Author: 1 The Internet Archive is experiencing sustained distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, leading to service disruptions. The non-profit research library, which provides free access to millions of historical documents, preserved websites and media content, said the attacks began on May 26 and have continued since. Tens of thousands of fake information […]

La entrada Internet Archive Disrupted by Sustained and “Mean” DDoS Attack – Source: www.infosecurity-magazine.com se publicó primero en CISO2CISO.COM & CYBER SECURITY GROUP.

Security incident at pension scheme being taken ‘extremely seriously’, but broadcaster says there is no evidence of a ransomware attack

The BBC has launched an investigation after the details of more than 25,000 current and former employees were exposed in a data breach.

The corporation’s pension scheme wrote to members on Wednesday to say their details had been stolen in a data security incident that it was taking “extremely seriously”.

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© Photograph: Graeme Robertson/The Guardian

In 2016, Russia used an army of trolls to interfere in the U.S. presidential election. This year, an American given asylum in Moscow may be accomplishing much the same thing all by himself.

© Alexander Zemlianichenko/Associated Press

Ellen Roome says firms should be required to hand over data in case it can help parents understand why their child died

A woman whose 14-year-old son killed himself is calling for parents to be given the legal right to access their child’s social media accounts to help understand why they died.

Ellen Roome has gathered more than 100,000 signatures on a petition calling for social media companies to be required to hand over data to parents after a child has died.

In the UK, the youth suicide charity Papyrus can be contacted on 0800 068 4141 or email pat@papyrus-uk.org, and in the UK and Ireland Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is at 988 or chat for support. You can also text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis text line counselor. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org.

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A.I. companies are divided over whether the technology should be freely available to anyone for modifying and copying, or kept close for safekeeping.

© Loren Elliott for The New York Times

After some trying years during which Mr. Zuckerberg could do little right, many developers and technologists have embraced the Meta chief as their champion of “open-source” artificial intelligence.

© Amanda Cotan

N.I.H. officials suggested federal record keepers helped them hide emails. If so, “that’s really damaging to trust in all of government,” one expert said.

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YouTube has been steadily trying out ways to stop ad blockers from working on its site. From big pop-ups shaming your ad blocker use to actually blocking videos, the Google-owned website has been pushing out new measures to try to curb the use of third-party apps such as AdBlock Plus. Now, it seems YouTube has taken another drastic step in this war, by skipping to the end of videos for some users with ad blockers installed.

On Monday, Reddit user u/SDHD4K posted a video of YouTube's latest attempt to thwart ad blockers, demonstrating how the video they chose to watch simply skips to the end with Adblock Plus enabled. Other comments in the thread confirmed the issue was happening on their end, too, while others claimed YouTube was muting videos when their ad blocker was enabled. Some comments in the Reddit thread dismissed the problem, saying that the AdBlock Plus team will likely have the issue fixed in a matter of hours.

The recent increase of ads on YouTube, as well as the increase in the cost of Google’s own YouTube Premium subscription, have likely pushed more users towards installing an ad blocker. Ads can be annoying, but they can also enable bad actors to share malware with unsuspecting users. That's why even the FBI recommends people install ad blockers when browsing the web.

If this latest YouTube change sounds annoying, that’s kind of the point. The company wants to make the experience of using ad blockers so annoying that you’ll disable them, and choose to either deal with the ads or pay for Premium. Fortunately for those who don’t want to sit through long, un-skippable ads to watch a short video, there are some alternatives out there.

Based on the user complaints here, most of these issues seem to be directed at programs like AdBlock or AdBlock Plus (no relation). Users running alternatives such as uBlock Origin have reported no issues at all. Some users have been swapping from AdBlock or even installing browsers like Brave—which has a built-in ad blocker—to help avoid these issues. It isn’t a foolproof plan by any means, but if you’re running into this problem, then you might want to try swapping things up and seeing where it gets you. It is possible this issue could also be an unintended behavior on YouTube’s part, but without any official word from the site, that one is hard to prove.

Ryan Salame, the head of FTX’s subsidiary in the Bahamas, was the first of Sam Bankman-Fried’s deputies to be sentenced since the crypto exchange collapsed in November 2022.

© Jefferson Siegel for The New York Times

Love watching Netflix for hours on end? There’s a lot more you can do with it if you spend just a few quick minutes in the settings section. You can improve your binge-watching weekend by customizing subtitles, home screen previews, download settings, and more. Here are 11 of the best Netflix tips and tricks.

Download your shows and movies offline

Like every other popular streaming service, Netflix lets you download movies and TV shows for offline viewing. Ad-free plans can download up to 100 items per device, while ad-supported plans can download 15 items. As long as you go online once every 30 days, you can keep that media on your device.

To adjust quality, open the Netflix app, go to your Profile, tap the Menu button at the top (the three horizontal lines), then go to App Settings > Downloads > Video Quality. Here, choose between Standard or Higher based on your storage space or network.

Now, just tap the Download button next to an episode, season, or movie to download it. You’ll find downloaded media in the Downloads section in your Profile tab, where you can watch and delete shows.

Sign out of one, or every other device

Netflix has an option that lets you log out of any device from the website. This will include all the devices that all the members of your account are using. So if you want to knock off TV access for a friend, or someone who's not part of your shared plan, this is the place to go.

Click the Profile icon and go to Account. Here, switch to the Devices tab and choose Access and devices. Here, find a device you want to log out from and click Sign Out. You can also click the Sign Out of All Devices button to log out all devices together.

Stop Netflix from sharing your private date to third parties

Netflix has an obscure setting that's so weirdly worded that you'd never take it to be about data collection. Netflix, by default, shares your privacy-protected contact information with third parties to display ads on third-party services. That is something you should disable, and it's done on a per-profile basis.

Click the Profile icon, go to Account, switch to the Profiles tab, choose your profile, and go to the Privacy and data settings option. Finally, disable the Allow matched identifier communications feature. Repeat this for all the profiles on your account.

Transfer your profile to a new account

Netflix's password sharing crack down is in full swing. If you cannot get around it, it might be time to create your own account. But that doesn't mean you need to start fresh with the algorithm. Netflix has a feature called Transfer Profiles that can help you take all your data from an old account to a new one.

Open the Netflix website and choose your profile. Then, click the Profile icon at the top and go to Transfer Profile. This will open up a new wizard. Click Start Profile Transfer and choose if you want to transfer to a brand-new account or to an existing one. Netflix will help you set up a new account with all your data. If you're transferring to an existing account, you'll need to know the email and the password for the account. Follow the instructions to transfer your profile to a new account.

Get rid of unwanted content from your watch history and recommendations

Want to get rid of an embarrassing title from your watch list? Or perhaps a title that you’re never going to finish? The only way to clear your Watching List (and the subsequent recommendations) is by removing a title from your Viewing Activity.

Go to Netflix’s Viewing Activity page (you can also get there from Account > Profiles > Your Profile > Viewing Activity).

Click the little Hide button next to the title that you want to remove. Confirm in the next step, and the title will disappear from your watching list.

Enable smart downloads for your mobile devices

If you watch Netflix on the way to work, or if you have a spotty internet connection, the Smart Downloads feature definitely helps. Once enabled, this will automatically delete completed episodes and will replace them with subsequent episodes when you’re back on Wi-Fi. You can also turn on "Downloads for you," which automatically downloads content Netflix thinks you'll like. You can enable these features on the iOS and Android apps from Profile > Menu > App Settings > Smart Downloads.

Stop Netflix from using too much of your mobile data plan

If you like watching Netflix when you’re out and about, it can eat into your mobile data plan pretty easily. Netflix’s data saver mode can help. In the Netflix app, go to Profile > Menu > App Settings > Cellular Data Usage. Here, disable the Automatic feature, and switch to the Save Data option. This will adjust quality while off wifi to allow for about six hours of playback per GB of data.

Make sure you’re watching in HD or 4K

It would be a shame to pay the 4K plan but only watch in 720p because you didn’t adjust your settings. Go to Netflix’s playback settings page, and from the Data Usage Per Screen option, switch to the High option. Now you’ll get the best quality for the device or screen that you’re on.

Stop Netflix from automatically playing next episodes and previews

Netflix loves autoplay. Whether it’s playing the next episode or movie right after you’re done watching something, or playing previews on the home screen, it can get pretty annoying.

You can disable both features on a profile-by-profile basis. After opening the Netflix website, go to the Profiles screen. Here, click the Manage Profiles button and choose the profile where you want to disable these features.

Now, uncheck Autoplay next episode in a series on all devices and Autoplay previews while browsing on all devices. Click the Save button to save your preferences.

Customize your subtitles to be way better

Finding the default subtitles too hard to read? You can change the subtitle font, color, and size. From the Netflix website, click the Profile icon and choose Account. Here, switch to the Profiles tab and select your profile. Now, choose the Subtitle Appearance option.

From here, you can change the subtitle font, text size, shadow, background color, and window color. Once you’re done, tap the Save button to save your settings.

Choose original dubs in your shows and movies

When you’re watching a foreign language film, Netflix has a habit of defaulting to English language dubbing. Sadly, there’s no setting to stop Netflix from doing that, but there’s always a way to switch to the original audio in the Netflix player. When you’re watching something, go to the Subtitles menu, and from the Audio section, switch to the Original audio.

Lock your profile to keep it private from other users

If you share your Netflix account with your friends or family members, your profile isn’t exactly private. Others can see what you’re watching, and they can also use your profile and mess up your recommendations.

If you want to protect your profile (especially if you share your account with your kids), click the Profiles icon and choose the Account option. Switch to the Profiles tab, choose your profile, and go to the Profile Lock section. Enter your account password, and from the next page, enable the Require a pin to access (user) account option. Then enter the four-digit pin and click the Save button. The next time you open Netflix, you’ll need to enter this pin to access your profile.

Block adult content, if you want

If you’re sharing your Netflix account with your kids or teenagers, you might want to block adult content. To do this, go to the Profiles tab in your Account and choose your profile. Here, go to the Viewing Restrictions section and enter your account password.

From the top, you can change the maturity rating (7+ to 18+). If you want, you can also turn the current profile into a children’s profile, only showing content suitable for children. From the bottom, you can choose to block a particular TV show or a movie. Once you’re done, click the Save button.

The advanced A.I. system would succeed GPT-4, which powers ChatGPT. The company has also created a new safety committee to address A.I.’s risks.

© Jason Redmond/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Chief executives are vulnerable to the same forces buffeting their employees. Leadership is important, but so is efficiency — and cost-cutting.

© Steph Ramplin

Vice President Kamala Harris has announced the formation of a new partnership to help provide internet access to 80% of Africa by 2030, up from roughly 40% now. From a report: The announcement comes as follow-through on Harris' visit to the continent last year and in conjunction with this week's visit to Washington by Kenyan President William Ruto. Harris and the Kenyan leader had a public chat on Friday at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce about how public-private partnerships can increase economic growth. "Many could rightly argue that the future is on the continent of Africa," said Harris, noting that the median age in Africa is 19, a sign of the potential for economic growth. "It is not about, and simply about aid, but about investment and understanding the capacity that exists." Africa has struggled to obtain the capital needed to build up its industrial and technological sectors.

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Elon Musk, who founded xAI last year, has said the business “still has a lot of catching up to do” as it looks to compete with well-funded companies like OpenAI.

© Nina Westervelt for The New York Times

First global study of its kind exposes ‘staggering scale’ of crime, with one in nine men in the US admitting to the offence

More than 300 million children across the globe are victims of online sexual exploitation and abuse each year, research suggests.

In what is believed to be the first global estimate of the scale of the crisis, researchers at the University of Edinburgh found that 12.6% of the world’s children have been victims of nonconsensual talking, sharing and exposure to sexual images and video in the past year, equivalent to about 302 million young people.

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© Photograph: Dominic Lipinski/PA

Founded in 1963, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers held a special event Sunday that they said would be "inspiring engineering for the next 50 years." The event featured talks on the origins of the internet from 80-year-old "father of the internet" Vint Cerf, along with John Shoch (who helped develop the Ethernet and internetwork protocols at Xerox PARC), Judith Estrin (who worked with Cerf on the TCP project), and Robert Kahn (who with Cerf first proposed the IP and TCP protocols). Ethernet co-inventor Bob Metcalfe also spoke at the end of the event. Long-time Slashdot reader repett0 was an onsite volunteer, and shares that "it was incredible to meet and greet such a wonderful mix of people making technology happen... [T]he event celebrated many key technologies and innovators from the past 50 years and considerations of what is to come in the next 50 years." Video streams are available and more are coming online (including interviews with key innovators, society leadership, and more). If you could not make this event, follow-on activities continue, including the People-Centered Internet Imagine Workshop where a mix of society is working together to consider how to improve humanity's intersection with ever-expanding abilities thanks to technology. They add that the event was made possible "through the collaboration of many professional computing societies" including the IEEE, People-Centered Internet, Google, Internet Society, IEEE Computer Society, GIANT Protocol, IEEE Foundation — and volunteers from the SF Bay Area ACM and Internet Society.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google Maps is so popular that it's pretty much synonymous with navigation. And that's for good reason. But while the app is pretty good with its default settings, if you go deeper, you'll unlock a treasure trove of useful features. From better walking directions to incognito mode, there's a bunch to Google Maps just below the surface.

Always keep the map facing north

Google Maps has a tendency to point the map in the direction you’re facing. For example, if you’re facing south, you’ll see the south displayed at the top of the screen in Google Maps. This works for some people, but it can leave others very confused. If you’re someone who likes to always keep north at the top of the screen, you can go to Google Maps settings > Navigation, and enable Keep map north up. If your mind is better attuned to paper maps, then this setting might make Google Maps more useful for you.

Review your navigation settings

Far too many people have ended up stranded or delayed because they haven't double checked any changes they might have made to their navigation settings. For example, you may have previously asked Google Maps to avoid toll roads during a journey and forgotten about it. On your next trip, Google Maps will remember the setting and could take you through longer or less safe routes (depending on where you are located). In some parts of the world, taking an offbeat route could be a fatal mistake. That's why it's best to review navigation settings before each long trip, especially if you're in an unfamiliar place.

Before you start your journey, tap the profile icon in Google Maps and go to Settings > Navigation. Under Route options, make sure your desired options are selected. You definitely don’t want to be avoiding highways or tolls under most circumstances, so it’s best to periodically check these settings.

Get better walking directions

When you're a pedestrian, Google Maps sends few audio alerts by default. You can manually make it send more so that you don't have to keep looking at your phone to navigate. Navigate to Google Maps settings > Navigation, scroll to the bottom, and enable Detailed voice guidance.

Make accessibility options more prominent

Plenty of people need accessibility information to be front and center in Google Maps. After all, inadequate accessibility features may make a location a no-go for some people. Although Google Maps is pretty good about showing accessibility information in general, you can make a small change that prominently highlights it in every listing. Go to Settings > Accessibility and enable Accessible places.

It's worth remembering that Google Maps may not always have accurate accessibility information, so it's always a good idea to call ahead and confirm if your destination actually has the facilities you need.

Review your content on Google Maps

The modern day Google Maps doesn't live in its own silo. It has access to a lot of information from your Google account, such as your photos, location history, and other Google services. There's a page in the app's settings that lets you review how this data appears in Google Maps. Go to Google Maps settings > Personal content to control what the app can display on your profile. This can be useful if you leave a lot of reviews.

Pause location history

If you’d rather not allow Google Maps to keep a tab on your location history, tap the profile icon and hit Personal content. Tap Location History to go to the Activity controls. Tap the Turn off button next to Location History to stop Google from logging your Google Maps locations. You can also tap Manage activity to review all previously saved locations and remove them. Alternatively, you can keep location history enabled and tap Auto-delete to make Google delete this data once it’s three months old.

Incognito mode

By default, Google Maps will keep logging your searches and location data unless you ask it not to. Using incognito mode is a quick way to stop some of that tracking. Tap the profile icon and select Turn on Incognito mode.

Stop Google Maps from logging your searches

Every time you use Google Maps to search for things, you may see a list of your recent searches below the search box. If this bothers you, turn off search history by going to Account Settings and disabling Save recent searches on this device.

Get rid of unwanted notifications

No one likes receiving unnecessary alerts on their phone all the time. Google Maps allows you to customize the kinds of alerts you receive, which is great for keeping the notifications you need while eliminating the spam. Make this tweak by going to Settings > Notifications in Google Maps.

Download maps for offline use

While most of us live in places with fairly decent internet connectivity, our travels can take us to remote places with less robust infrastructure. If you’re planning a trip to a rural destination, it helps to download maps for offline use. These won’t have the accurate, up-to-date traffic data you’re used to, but it still beats being lost in a place with no cellular reception.

To download maps, tap the profile icon in Google Maps and select Offline maps. Next, tap Select your own map and you’ll see a zoomed out map of the place you’re in. Just move the blue rectangle over the area you intend to visit and then tap Download. Before downloading, Google Maps tells you how much space downloaded maps will occupy on your smartphone. You can use offline maps for up to 30 days from the date of download.

Plot routes with multiple stops

For long journeys, Google Maps can actually add stops to your route. Usually, Google Maps shows the fastest possible route between two places, but if you plan to visit a few other spots along the way, adding it to the route will help you get a more realistic ETA.

First, open Google Maps and plot a route. Then, tap the three-dots icon in the top-right and select Add Stop. This will allow you to add another location. You can also drag the three horizontal lines icon next to each stop to change the order of your stops.

Set a reminder to leave

Google Maps can also send you a notification around the time you should leave, to help you reach your destination on time. Enter the place you’re leaving from and the place you’re going to in Google Maps, then tap the three-dots icon in the top-right and select Set a reminder to leave. You can select when you want to leave in the Depart at tab, and hit Finished. Maps will then send you a notification at the time you chose.

Alternatively, you can go to the Arrive by tab and select when you’d like to reach your destination. Google Maps will figure out the right departure time for you to make it to your destination on time, and send a reminder accordingly.

Change vehicle icon

While you’re on one of these awesome road trips, you can quickly add a small—but fun—element to Google Maps. The default vehicle icon is a blue arrow, but if you tap that arrow, you will see other vehicle icons too. Pick the one you like and you’re set.

Tell Google Maps which EV plugs you use

Electric vehicle owners have to deal with multiple charging plug standards, and it can sometimes be a hassle to find the right kinds of chargers for your car. You can solve this problem by telling Google Maps which types of charging plugs your EV uses. When you look for chargers, the app will then highlight ones that use plugs compatible with your vehicle. To enable this in Google Maps, go to Settings > Electric vehicle settings > Add plugs.

Customize public transit options

When you enter a destination on Google Maps, you’ll also see a tiny little train icon below it. Tapping this will allow you to check public transit timings and available routes for your journey. This is pretty accurate in many places, but the secret sauce here is the customizability of this option. To see these, tap the Options button that appears when you select public transport.

Here, you can sort results by extremely useful filters such as Wheelchair accessible and Lowest cost, apart from preferred modes of public transport.

Disable autoplaying videos

Google Maps sometimes shows you video previews for certain locations. These start playing automatically, but if you want to disable them, go to Settings > Video settings, and disable Allow autoplay.

Share your location in real time

Google Maps also allows you to share your location with others in real time. This may sound a bit creepy, but can be a useful safety feature. For example, if you are feeling unsafe, you can allow close friends or family members to monitor your location for some time. This feature is also helpful when you’re heading to a friend’s home and they want to see how far away you are.

To use this feature, tap the profile icon in Google Maps and hit Location sharing. When you want to begin sharing, tap Share location and then tap For 1 hour to customize how long you want to share your location. Finally, you can select one of your contacts from the list or tap More options to send a link containing your realtime location using other apps.

Learn more about local businesses

If you’re not sure if a local business has the amenities you need, look for the business in Google Maps, swipe right below the name of the business, and then tap the About tab.

This lists a lot of useful information, such as whether the lot is wheelchair accessible, if the bathrooms are gender-neutral, or if the business is minority-owned.

Minnesota this week eliminated two laws that made it harder for cities and towns to build their own broadband networks. From a report: The state-imposed restrictions were repealed in an omnibus commerce policy bill signed on Tuesday by Gov. Tim Walz, a Democrat. Minnesota was previously one of about 20 states that imposed significant restrictions on municipal broadband. The number can differ depending on who's counting because of disagreements over what counts as a significant restriction. But the list has gotten smaller in recent years because states including Arkansas, Colorado, and Washington repealed laws that hindered municipal broadband. The Minnesota bill enacted this week struck down a requirement that municipal telecommunications networks be approved in an election with 65 percent of the vote. The law is over a century old, the Institute for Local Self-Reliance's Community Broadband Network Initiative wrote yesterday.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The company’s latest A.I. search feature has erroneously told users to eat glue and rocks, provoking a backlash among users.

© Jeff Chiu/Associated Press

Your Kindle reading experience can go far beyond what's available on the Kindle store. If, like me, you've only been buying your reading material from Amazon (or borrowing e-books from your local library), it's time to explore what your e-reader can really do.

Amazon has a dedicated program called Send to Kindle that you can use to wirelessly send articles, word documents, PDFs, and copyright-free e-books right to your Kindle, no cable required. But there's plenty of other options now, too. Here are some of my favorites.

How Amazon's Send to Kindle program works

You might not know it, but your Kindle has its own email address, which can be used to send documents directly to your device.

This technology has been around for over a decade. But now, there are many more options to send articles, documents and e-books to Kindle. These include Chrome extensions, desktop apps, and built-in support for the feature in the Kindle apps for iOS and Android. Here, you don't even need to worry about remembering and finding your device's email address (although I do like the simplicity of the email method).

Before you start sending over your files, a word on format support. Amazon won't let you send .MOBI files (which is one of the native file formats for Kindle), but it will happily take your EPUB file, and will run it on both on your Kindle and in the Kindle app. In fact, it will even sync the read position between your Kindle and your iPhone app, just like if you'd bought a book from the Kindle Store.

Kindle devices support .DOC, .DOCX, .HTML, .TXT, .PDF and .EPUB file formats.

Send e-books using your Kindle email address

Sometimes, the old-fashioned ways are the best. Not everyone wants another service or browser extension.

For this, all you need to do is to find your Kindle's email address. You can do this from your Kindle itself. Open Kindle Settings and go to Your Account. Here, at the bottom, you'll find your Send-to-Kindle email address. Make a note of it.

Now, after downloading the e-books or documents you want to your non-Kindle device (it doesn't matter if it's your computer or your phone), open your email app and create a new email. Add this Kindle address to the To field. Make sure that you're using the same email as the one you used to create your Kindle account.

Then, attach the documents or e-books to the email, leave the Subject blank, and send the email. Amazon will process the files on its servers, adding them to your cloud account, and will send the files to your Kindle as well, all in just a few moments. The book will show up in your Kindle, as illustrated by the screenshot below.

If this doesn't work for you, it might be because you are using a different email address. That's fine, but you'll need to approve this additional email in your Kindle settings before you can use it to send files to your Kindle. Frustratingly, this can only be done on the Amazon website.

Navigate to the Content and Devices section on Amazon. Here, choose the Preferences tab at the top of the page, and go to Personal Document Settings.

Scroll down to the Approved Personal Document E-Mail List section and click the Add a new approved e-mail address button.

Here, add the email address that you want to use to send documents to your Kindle.

Send any document or e-book using the Send to Kindle website

This is a great option if you just need to send a document every now and then. Visit Amazon's Send to Kindle website and log in with your Amazon account. The website automatically figures out your connected Kindle devices, so there's nothing else to do other than drag and drop files. Click the Send button and wait for a couple of minutes for the documents to show up on your Kindle.

Send documents on the go with the Kindle app

Sending documents to your Kindle using your iPhone or Android is easier if you already have the Kindle app set up. The Kindle app doesn't support web articles, but it will do a good job with .EPUB and .PDF files.

First, locate the file in the Files app of your choice, open the Share menu, and choose the Kindle app. This will open up a Send to Kindle menu. Tap the Send button and wait for the e-book or document to show up on your Kindle.

Send articles using the Chrome extension

Let's say you've come across a long article while browsing that you'd like to read on your Kindle later on. The best way to do this is by using the Send to Kindle Chrome extension.

In the extension, log in with your Amazon account and navigate to a page you want to send to your Kindle. Click the extension, and choose the Quick Send option to send a distraction-free version of the website to your Kindle. It will be free of ads and formatting.

Use a third party Send to Kindle service

Amazon's Send to Kindle extension only works on Chrome, and has very few customization options. Thankfully, there are a plethora of third-party extensions that can help you send articles to your Kindle. Push to Kindle is a customizable option, but the free plan limits you to 10 articles a month (unlimited plan costs $2.99/month). I prefer using Push to Kindle because it does an impressive job at text formatting, and it has an option to remove all images.

If you're looking for a completely free option, Reabble is a good choice. You can also use read-later apps like Pocket or Instapaper to send articles to Kindle.

They all work in the same basic fashion. You can either use their browser extensions, or their Bookmarklet, which can also work on mobile browsers. You'll first need to add the service's email address to your Amazon account's Approved Personal Document E-mail list. I explained how to do that in the e-mail section above. Next, provide the service the email address to your Kindle (again, covered above), and send it along. The service will do the part of converting the article to an e-book for you.

Best Kindle devices for reading non-Kindle documents

To take advantage of any of these tips, you're going to need a Kindle. Here's a few good options for reading any kind of document on a Kindle, especially those not from the Amazon store.

The Kindle Scribe is Amazon's first take on an e-note, meaning it comes with a stylus that you can use to mark up your documents. If you're sending schoolwork to your Kindle, it's a great choice.

Otherwise, the Kindle Paperwhite is a great standby. More affordable than the Scribe, its ability to control color temperature is good for late-night reading, making it a more comfortable way to read long articles from the web.

Atsuko Sato announces death of her shiba inu Kabosu, whose 2010 photo led her to be described as ‘Mona Lisa of the internet’

The Japanese dog whose photo inspired a generation of oddball online jokes and the £18bn Dogecoin cryptocurrency beloved by Elon Musk has died, her owner said.

“She quietly passed away as if asleep while I caressed her,” Atsuko Sato wrote on her blog on Friday, thanking the fans of her shiba inu called Kabosu – the face of the ‘Doge’ meme.

Continue reading...

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© Photograph: Dado Ruvić/Reuters

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© Photograph: Dado Ruvić/Reuters

The billionaire owner of X has increasingly been using his social media platform to criticize President Biden for his health and immigration policies, according to a New York Times analysis.

© Alice Lagarde

Russia has deployed advanced tech to interfere with Elon Musk’s satellite internet service, Ukrainian officials said, leading to more outages on the northern front battle line.

© Sasha Maslov for The New York Times

Russia has deployed advanced tech to interfere with Elon Musk’s satellite internet service, Ukrainian officials said, leading to more outages on the northern front battle line.

© Sasha Maslov for The New York Times

Families are about to find it a lot easier to use Google Password Manager. Originally announced in February of this year, password sharing has started to roll out to Google Password Manager, Android Authority reports.

According to Google’s support documents, the new feature will allow users to “securely” share copies of their saved passwords with members of their family group.

This means you’ll need to have a family group—or create one—to use this feature. You won't be able to share to any old Google account. If you’re already part of a family group and you use Google Password Manager for Android, you should now see a new “share” button next to your passwords, although Android Authority reports that this might not be the case on desktop quite yet.

I can also confirm that neither of my computers have been able to access the feature, and neither has my iPhone. However, PCs and iOS should eventually get access to it through their respective Chrome apps.

Sharing passwords has always been a really tricky thing, especially since text messages and emails aren’t very secure. Having a password sharing option available right in Google Password Manager will undoubtedly make the free password manager even more appealing for users that already trust Google with their information.

Other password managers, like 1Password, LastPass, Bitwarden, and even the relative newcomer Proton Pass, also offer password-sharing functionality, although like Google's reliance on family groups, they all come with their own limitations.

Hopefully, Google will expand on this feature in the future—perhaps with something like LastPass’s one-time-password feature, which allows you to share a password with someone without actually giving them the password. That one-time password also expires after a certain amount of time, to help keep your account secure.

Keep an eye out for the new sharing functionality in your Google Password Manager over the coming days. It should be available as part of May’s Google Play Services update v24.20.

It turns out way fewer people knew search engines like DuckDuckGo are just whitelabel versions of Microsoft Bing than I thought. Today, in most of Europe and Asia, search engines like DuckDuckGo, Ecosia, Qwant, other alternative search engines, ChatGPT internet search, and even Windows Copilot were all down. It turns out the culprit was Microsoft Bing; and when Microsoft Bing goes down, everyone who uses it goes down too.

Alternative search engines often try to be vague about their whitelabel status, or even outright hide it altogether. Bing is a popular search engine for whitelabeling, so when Bing goes down, almost the entire house of cards of alternative search engines comes tumbling down as well.

DuckDuckGo, for instance, places a lot of emphasis on using specialised search engines like TripAdvisor and direct sources like Sportradar or Wikipedia, as well as its own crawler and other indexes. However, as we saw today, as soon as Bing goes down, DuckDuckGo just stops working entirely. DDG happens to be my main search engine – a case of less shit than everyone else – so all throughout the day I was met with the error message “There was an error displaying the search results. Please try again.”

I don’t begrudge DDG or other search engines for repackaging Bing search results – building a truly new search engine and running it is incredibly hard, costly, and you’ll always be lagging behind – but I was surprised by how many people didn’t know just how common this practice really was. My Fediverse feeds were filled with people surprised to learn they’d been using Bing all along, just wrapped in a nicer user interface and with some additional features.

YouTube, haven't you ever heard the expression, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it?" Why, of all things to change on your platform, did you go messing with your site's UI? The video player is now squished into the top-left corner with a bloated suggested videos feed below it, while the description and comments are scrunched into the right third of the page. It's giving "graphic design is my passion."

No one is happy about the change, but YouTube doesn't seem to care. Unlike other types of changes the site rolls out, the new layout appears mostly permanent. There's no option to revert to the old look, or to opt-out of experimental designs. If you open YouTube and see the new UI, that's the one you're stuck with. (That said, one Redditor claims their layout reverted on its own after four weeks.)

While YouTube seems content to make the change a fixture for more and more users, those users aren't going down without a fight. The internet, of course, doesn't like to be told what to do, and finds a way around these forced changes.

In a post on r/YouTube last month, Redditor Chaski1212 shared a workaround: Chaski1212 wrote a block of code that reverts all of YouTube changes back to the old UI, and it seems to actually work. While I don't have the new layout on any of my Google Accounts yet, plenty of Redditors have shared that the code brings back the old layout on their accounts, so it appears like this is a solid solution for now.

How to bring back the old YouTube layout

First, you'll need to install uBlock Origin in your browser. This is an extension that can block a host of different elements on webpages while you browse (namely, ads). However, you can set filters in uBlock Origin for advanced adjustments. This is where Chaski1212's code comes into play.

Once you have uBlock Origin installed in your browser (it works with Chrome, Firefox, Microsoft Edge, and Opera), open the extension and click the three gears to open the dashboard. Here, click My Filters, and paste the following:

! Youtube New UI Fix
youtube.com###related #thumbnail.ytd-rich-grid-media:style(margin-right: 8px!important;height: 94px!important;width: 168px!important;min-width: 168px!important;)
youtube.com###related #avatar-link.ytd-rich-grid-media, #related #attached-survey.ytd-rich-grid-media, #related .ytd-rich-shelf-renderer .button-container.ytd-rich-shelf-renderer:style(display:none!important;)
youtube.com###related #dismissible.ytd-rich-grid-media:style(display:flex;flex-direction:row!important;)
youtube.com###related #details.ytd-rich-grid-media:style(width: 100%!important;min-width: 0!important;)
youtube.com###related #contents ytd-rich-item-renderer:style(margin:0!important;margin-top:8px!important;)
youtube.com###related ytd-rich-grid-row #contents.ytd-rich-grid-row,#related h3.ytd-rich-grid-media,#related ytd-rich-section-renderer #content,#related #rich-shelf-header.ytd-rich-shelf-renderer:style(margin:0!important;)
youtube.com###related ytd-rich-item-renderer.ytd-rich-grid-row,#content.ytd-rich-item-renderer:style(width:100%!important;)
youtube.com###related #video-title.ytd-rich-grid-media:style(font-size:1.4rem!important;)
youtube.com###related .ytd-channel-name a,#related #metadata-line.ytd-video-meta-block span:style(font-size:12px!important;)
youtube.com###related ytd-rich-grid-renderer #contents:style(padding-top:0px!important;)
youtube.com###related .ytd-rich-shelf-renderer ytd-rich-item-renderer.ytd-rich-shelf-renderer:style(width:130px!important;min-width: 130px!important;)
youtube.com###related #contents.ytd-rich-shelf-renderer:style(display: flex !important;flex-direction: row !important;gap: 8px !important;flex-wrap: nowrap!important;max-width: 400px!important;overflow-x: scroll!important;overflow-y: hidden!important)
youtube.com###related .ytd-rich-shelf-renderer .yt-core-image:style(object-fit: cover!important;)
youtube.com###related ytd-rich-section-renderer #contents:style(margin-left:0!important)
youtube.com###related #contents ytd-rich-section-renderer ytd-rich-item-renderer:style(margin-top:0px!important;)
youtube.com###related .ytd-rich-shelf-renderer ytd-rich-item-renderer.ytd-rich-shelf-renderer[hidden=""]:style(display:block!important;)
youtube.com###related #dismissible.ytd-rich-shelf-renderer:style(margin:0!important; border-color: transparent!important)
youtube.com###title yt-formatted-string.ytd-watch-metadata:style(font-size:20px!important; font-weight: 700!important; line-height:28px!important)
youtube.com##+js(set, yt.config_.EXPERIMENT_FLAGS.kevlar_watch_grid, false)
youtube.com##+js(set, yt.config_.EXPERIMENT_FLAGS.small_avatars_for_comments, false)
youtube.com##+js(set, yt.config_.EXPERIMENT_FLAGS.kevlar_watch_comments_panel_button, false)
youtube.com##+js(set, yt.config_.EXPERIMENT_FLAGS.web_rounded_thumbnails, false)
youtube.com##+js(set, yt.config_.EXPERIMENT_FLAGS.web_watch_rounded_player_large, false)
youtube.com##+js(set, yt.config_.EXPERIMENT_FLAGS.kevlar_watch_max_player_width, 1280)

This jumble of code should tell uBlock Origin to fix just about everything wrong with your YouTube player. If I ever see my YouTube UI change, I'll be instantly reaching for this code. Let's just hope YouTube doesn't find a way around this hack—or, better yet, gives up on this redesign altogether.

Accused of violating antitrust laws, Live Nation Entertainment faces a fight that could reshape the multibillion-dollar live music industry.

© Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York Times

Live Nation Entertainment, the concert giant that owns Ticketmaster, faces a fight that could reshape the multibillion-dollar live music industry.

© Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York Times

The words "social network" imply that such tools will connect you with the people in your life. That's not how these services work anymore.

At this point in the downward spiral of life on the internet, Instagram is mostly jammed with viral videos, none of my friends are active on Facebook, and Twitter—a site I once used to both kindle and maintain friendships—is a husk of what it once was (it's not even called Twitter anymore). At this point, there's basically nowhere I can talk to all my friends at once.

Except for in an email. Here we are, deep into the Web 2.0 era (or possibly in the web 3.0 era, depending on how much you've bought into the blockchain), and the best way to talk to a group of your friends online is a technology that dates back to the 1970s. If social networks are about connecting you to the people in your life, which I would argue they are, email is the only social network still standing.

Things didn't have to be this way. The companies that run social networks could have made different decisions. They could have prioritized actual connection over their endless appetite for dopamine-driving scale. But they didn't, and their platforms are now terrible at doing what they were ostensibly created to do.

Email, meanwhile, still works just fine.

Messaging is a fragmented mess

I host a party once a month. I email a large group of people to let them know that they can stop by. Sometimes a few people respond to it and hit reply-all, causing minor chaos, which is fine; sometimes no one does, which is also fine. Every month a handful of the people I email stop by, and we have a great time. The people who don't stop by tell me that they still like getting the emails.

It's hard to think of another tool I could use to accomplish this as effectively. There was a time, in the early 2010s, when I might have used Facebook, but no one I know under 60 who is still active there. I could hypothetically start a Discord server, but that means building an entire online community that pulls together friends from different parts of my life, which I don't want to do. And even if I did, it would only work if everyone both joined and checked my server regularly. I doubt that would happen.

The same goes for any other messaging service. Most of my friends use some combination of Apple Messages, Signal, Whatsapp, Messenger, and probably other services I don't even know about. There's no simple way to message users of one service from another, meaning there's no simple way to reach everyone at once. There is no one thing that everyone uses except possibly SMS, and SMS is a nightmare way to talk to large groups.

Email has none of these problems. I can send an email to a group of people, regardless of which email provider they use, and it will work. It doesn't matter if my friends use Gmail, Outlook, Proton, or an email server running on a Rapsberry Pi—it all works the same, and I can be reasonably certain that people will actually receive and even read the message. If there's a better tool out there for this I haven't found it (and finding tools and software is literally my job).

Email newsletters are the new blogs

Email isn't just for planning parties. I run a small email newsletter. It more or less serves as a roundup of my articles from various outlets, bundled with a few of my thoughts about life. And a picture of my cat. It's nothing complicated, but I find creating and sending it out rewarding.

There is nothing in my email newsletter that I don't push out to other social networks, including LinkedIn, Facebook, X, and Mastodon. I sometimes even have brief conversations on those platforms after publishing something, which I appreciate. But fr some reason, the best conversations consistently happen in response to my email newsletters. Some of them are with friends I see regularly; some are with people I haven't seen or heard from in a while; some are with people I work with; some are with complete strangers. All are actual conversations, featuring an exchange of ideas and a bit of back-and-forth—a little social engagement, which is more than I can say for my interactions on any actual social network.

Perhaps I wouldn't feel this way if I were an influencer with a massive account on one of those traditional social media platforms. Maybe if I had hundreds of thousands of followers I would get a decent amount of response to anything and everything I published. I'm not sure that I actually want that, though. I also believe that I shouldn't need to build myself into some form of pseudo celebrity in order for my work to inspire a couple of conversations.

With email, I don't have to do that. I am sure there are people with different experiences, and I'm happy for them. Perhaps they will leave me a thoughtful comment down below this article saying as much, but I hope they choose to send me a nice email instead.

"We present the results of a meta-analysis of all empirical studies on the effects of these warnings. Overall, we found that warnings had no effect on affective responses to negative material or on educational outcomes. However, warnings reliably increased anticipatory affect. Findings on avoidance were mixed, suggesting either that warnings have no effect on engagement with material or that they increased engagement with negative material under specific circumstances."

Full Abstract: "Trigger warnings, content warnings, or content notes are alerts about upcoming content that may contain themes related to past negative experiences. Advocates claim that warnings help people to emotionally prepare for or completely avoid distressing material. Critics argue that warnings both contribute to a culture of avoidance at odds with evidence-based treatment practices and instill fear about upcoming content. A body of psychological research has recently begun to empirically investigate these claims. We present the results of a meta-analysis of all empirical studies on the effects of these warnings. Overall, we found that warnings had no effect on affective responses to negative material or on educational outcomes. However, warnings reliably increased anticipatory affect. Findings on avoidance were mixed, suggesting either that warnings have no effect on engagement with material or that they increased engagement with negative material under specific circumstances. Limitations and implications for policy and therapeutic practice are discussed." Citation: Bridgland, V. M. E., Jones, P. J., & Bellet, B. W. (2023). A Meta-Analysis of the Efficacy of Trigger Warnings, Content Warnings, and Content Notes. Clinical Psychological Science, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/21677026231186625 Note that the Association for Psychological Science has a more public-facing writeup about the research, if you'd prefer a non-researcher-oriented read. If, instead, you'd like to read more research, you might take a look at the articles citing/responding to the meta-analysis.

Marc Andreessen, Chamath Palihapitiya and several other tech venture capitalists are increasingly criticizing President Biden and making their disaffection known in an election year.

© Barbara Gibson

Why did a mini corduroy suit appear in a woman’s home? Helen McLaughlin, Karen Whitehouse and Lauren Kilby dive down a new rabbit hole. Plus: five of the best podcasts about songs

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Glad We Had This Chat With Caroline Hirons
Widely available, episodes weekly
You can get celebrities to spill serious tea by digging into their beauty bags, which skincare guru and natural chatterbox Caroline Hirons knows all too well in her new interview series. It’s an impressive start with first guest Sarah Jessica Parker, who reveals her favourite Boots beauty buy for under £2, gets frank on ageing and her body, compares her parenting style with that of husband Matthew Broderick and gushes over Zadie Smith. Hollie Richardson

Continue reading...

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© Photograph: Milan Goldbach Photography

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© Photograph: Milan Goldbach Photography

Microsoft is adding screenshot prevention controls in Edge to block you from taking screenshots at work. "It's all designed to prevent you from sharing screenshots with competitors, relatives, and journalists using Microsoft Edge for Business," reports PCWorld. From the report: Specifically, IT managers at corporations will be able to tag web pages as protected, as defined in various Microsoft policy engines in Microsoft 365, Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps, Microsoft Intune Mobile Application Management and Microsoft Purview, Microsoft said. The screenshot prevention feature will be available to customers in the "coming months," Microsoft said. It's also unclear whether third-party tools will be somehow blocked from taking screenshots or recording video, too. Microsoft will also roll out a way to force Edge for Business users to automatically update their browsers. The feature will enter a preview phase over the next few weeks, Microsoft said. "The Edge management service will enable IT admins to see which devices have Edge instances that are out of date and at risk," Microsoft said. "It will also provide mitigating controls, such as forcing a browser restart to install updates, enabling automatic browser updates or enabling enhanced security mode for added protections."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: People whose names get mangled by autocorrect have urged technology companies to fix the problem faster, with one person whose name gets switched to "Satan" saying: "I am tired of it." People with Irish, Indian and Welsh names are among those calling for improvements to the systems that operate on phones and computers as part of the "I am not a typo" campaign. "It is important that technology becomes more inclusive," said Savan-Chandni Gandecha, 34, a British Indian content creator whose name, which means monsoon moonlight, has been autocorrected to Satan. "My name has also been corrected to Savant," he said. "It is sometimes corrected to Savan, or the hyphen is not accepted by online forms and that irks me," he said. "Even in India my name gets corrected to "Sawan", and it's not just an English issue. It's a multi-language thing." The campaign has estimated that four out of 10 names of babies born in England and Wales in 2021 were deemed "wrong" or "not accepted" when tested on Microsoft's English dictionary. Dhruti Shah, a journalist, has backed the campaign after seeing her name autocorrected to "Dirty" and "Dorito". She said: "My first name isn't even that long -- only six characters -- but yet when it comes up as an error or it's mangled and considered an unknown entity, it's like saying that it's not just your name that's wrong, but you are." The campaign group -- established by a group of people working in the creative industries in London -- wrote an open letter to technology companies, which pointed out that between 2017 and 2021, 2,328 people named Esmae were born, compared with 36 Nigels. Esmae gets autocorrected to Admar, while Nigel is unchanged. "There are so many diverse names in the global majority but autocorrect is western- and white-focused," said Gandecha. Rashmi Dyal-Chand, a professor at Northeastern University in the US whose name is sometimes corrected to Sashimi, is supporting the latest campaign and said: "For people with names like mine, autocorrect is not convenient and helpful. It is unhelpful. And yes -- it is harmful." "We all increasingly rely on smartphones, tablets, word processors, and apps that use autocorrect. Yet autocorrect incorporates a set of defaults -- including dictionaries -- that help some of its users to communicate seamlessly at the expense of others who cannot." Karen Fox, whose children are called Eoin and Niamh, said of autocorrect: "The red line bothers me -- I didn't choose the 'wrong' name for my child. Tech companies update dictionaries with slang all the time and I think it should be an easy thing to do and definitely a priority."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Live Nation Entertainment, the concert giant that owns Ticketmaster, faces a fight that could reshape the multibillion-dollar live music industry.

© Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York Times

The Silicon Valley company was again lifted by sales of its artificial intelligence chips, but it faces growing competition and heightened expectations.

© Jim Wilson/The New York Times

The FTX founder’s final destination wasn’t clear, but Mr. Bankman-Fried has told people close to him that he expected to be moved to a facility in Mendota, Calif.

© Brittainy Newman for The New York Times

Elon Musk’s first human experiment with a computerized brain device developed significant flaws, but the subject, who is paralyzed, has few regrets.

© Rebecca Noble for The New York Times