TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Engadget: TikTok-owner ByteDance debuts Ripple music creation app. “Ripple can create songs in various genres based on a melody the user hums. The app prompts them into humming into the phone mic and then generates instrumentals they can use, such as drums, bass and piano. The length of the song output will match the length of the input, though — the app can’t generate a full soundtrack from just a few seconds of humming. Also, Ripple can only generate instrumental music, leaving the vocal work to creators.”

Boing Boing: Wikipedia updates its Creative Commons license. “Wikipedia is moving to the CC BY-SA 4.0 license, from the old version it’s used for years. What’s the difference? It means that other v4-licensed material can be added to Wikipedia verbatim, it’s written with international law in mind, it has simpler attribution requirements, and is easier for laypersons to read and understand.”

USEFUL STUFF

Make Tech Easier: 11 Lesser-Known Google Sheets Functions You Can Use Every Day. “Google Sheets has some terrific features that you probably use all the time. But when it comes to functions, there may be several you didn’t know existed. These handy functions and their accompanying formulas help you compare values, get financial data, convert arrays to columns or rows, and more. This list includes 11 lesser-known Google Sheets functions that can help you be more productive.”

MakeUseOf: 4 Chrome Extensions That Simulate Color Blindness. “If you’re looking for online tools that raise awareness about color blindness by letting you browse through the lens of someone with color deficiency, look no further. People who suffer from color blindness can find it challenging to browse effectively, especially when some websites rely heavily on using certain colors to deliver signs and information.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Washington Post: A viral left-wing Twitter account may have been fake all along. “In eight months, Erica Marsh has become one of the most consistently viral left-wing voices on Twitter, gaining more than 130,000 followers for her hyper-liberal, often melodramatic opinions on the biggest flash points in American news…. There’s just one problem: She’s probably a fake.”

NPR: For the record: We visit Colleen Shogan, the first woman appointed U.S. Archivist . “Shogan is the first woman ever appointed to be National Archivist. Her job is to make sure that the nation’s history — through its documents — is preserved. The archives contain 13.5 billion records. Everything from the Constitution to the 19th Amendment to the papers your grandfather might have submitted to join the U.S. Army.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Search Engine Journal: ChatGPT Disables ‘Browse With Bing’ Amid Legal Challenges. “OpenAI suspends ChatGPT’s ‘Browse with Bing’ amid content concerns while facing lawsuits over copyright and data privacy violations.”

Mashable: Sharing deepfake porn criminalised in England and Wales . “The government is cracking down on image based sexual abuse in England and Wales. Deepfake porn — which uses editing technology to make and share fake images of a person without consent — will be criminalised under the new measures announced(opens in a new tab) today.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Stanford University: A New Approach Trains Large Language Models in Half the Time. “A Stanford team has developed Sophia, a new way to optimize the pretraining of large language models that’s twice as fast as current approaches.”

University of Manchester: Ukraine data project is recognised for its innovation by OECD. “A project involving experts from The University of Manchester which created a live ‘early alarm’ system of major displacement, human rights abuses, humanitarian needs and civilian resistance in Ukraine has been recognised by the OECD’s Observatory of Public Sector Innovation.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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