NEW RESOURCES

Tennessee Department of Health: New Online Resource Connects Tennesseans In Substance-Use Crisis To local Treatment Services. “FindHelpNowTN.org guides individuals to location-based openings and services available at substance use treatment facilities. Site users can search facility listings using up to 60 different features such as the type of treatment needed, insurance programs, payment methods and availability of wrap-around services.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

State of Connecticut: Governor Lamont Commemorates International Open Data Day 2023. “Governor Ned Lamont is marking International Open Data Day, which is celebrated this year on March 5, 2023, by recognizing the transparency and openness of Connecticut’s state government and highlighting recent enhancements that increase data available for the public’s use on the state’s Open Data portal, data.ct.gov.”

Ars Technica: AI-powered Bing Chat gains three distinct personalities. “On Wednesday, Microsoft employee Mike Davidson announced that the company has rolled out three distinct personality styles for its experimental AI-powered Bing Chat bot: Creative, Balanced, or Precise. Microsoft has been testing the feature since February 24 with a limited set of users. Switching between modes produces different results that shift its balance between accuracy and creativity.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

From ANSAmed, and translated from Italian (an English version is available but the formatting is really bad): Project to digitize Italian periodicals in Egypt. “A project was presented in Cairo which, through the digitization of tens of thousands of pages, aims to preserve and make available to the public the historic collection of printed periodicals by the end of the year in Egypt in the Italian language in almost 50 years, between the end of the 19th century and the pre-war period.”

Auto Evolution: I Used Google Maps and Waze for a Two-Hour Drive and the Results Are Not Surprising. “Opinions are still divided on whether Waze is better than Google Maps, or the other way around, so I decided to use both for a 2-hour drive. The purpose of the test was to determine the accuracy of the ETA but also to see which app makes the journey overall more predictable.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

NBC News: 3,000 Asians in Texas had their driver’s licenses sent to a criminal group. They want answers.. “Asian Americans in Texas are angered after officials revealed this week that thousands of Asians statewide may be impacted by identity theft orchestrated through a website that involved using personal information to answer security questions.”

TechCrunch: Hackers steal gun owners’ data from firearm auction website. “Hackers breached a website that allows people to buy and sell guns, exposing the identities of its users, TechCrunch has learned. The breach exposed reams of sensitive personal data for more than 550,000 users, including customers’ full names, home addresses, email addresses, plaintext passwords and telephone numbers. Also, the stolen data allegedly makes it possible to link a particular person with the sale or purchase of a specific weapon.”

Connexion: French MPs back social media age restrictions for teenagers. “French MPs have backed a bill to reinforce a minimum ‘digital age’ of 15 for new accounts on prominent social media platforms. Those under this age will require parental confirmation to access apps such as TikTok and Snapchat.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

University of British Columbia: ‘Greed is good’ for likes and retweets if you’re a U.S. senator. “The researchers from UBC’s department of psychology analyzed every tweet posted by U.S. senators from early 2013 to late 2021—a total of 861,104 tweets from 140 senators. The researchers were looking specifically for communication about greed, so they could see if it correlates with more likes and retweets. As it turns out, it does.”

The Guardian: Unlocking the stories behind the shorthand. “The largest part of the collection was made up of reporter’s notebooks, chiefly written in shorthand. Sadly, a combined decade and a half as archivists in a newspaper archive had left us none the wiser when it came to reading this. When we managed to secure a precious few minutes of help from some of the Guardian’s journalists, we found out that this was Pitman New Era shorthand, not widely taught in the UK since the 1970s.” Good afternoon, Internet..

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