NEW RESOURCES

Art Daily: The Beaverbrook Art Gallery launches its online digital collection of nearly 5000 works of art . “The entire Beaverbrook Art Gallery permanent collection of works is now viewable online on the gallery’s website for members of the public to study and enjoy, and this is joined with new animated videos and activities for children.”

Scientific Data: Digitization of the Australian Parliamentary Debates, 1998–2022 . “Following the lead of the Linked Parliamentary Data project which achieved this for Canada, we provide a new, comprehensive, high-quality, rectangular database that captures proceedings of the Australian parliamentary debates from 1998 to 2022. The database is publicly available and can be linked to other datasets such as election results.”

Safe Work Australia: New website provides WHS data at your fingertips. “Today, Safe Work Australia released a new interactive data website that allows users to explore national work health and safety (WHS) and workers’ compensation data in an intuitive and user-friendly way. The new website provides a wide array of WHS data through dashboards, data collections and reports not previously available to the public. Website users can now explore and create their own charts and tables to explore insights into WHS data by industry, occupation, year, and mechanism of injury.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Business Insider: Russian tech billionaire wants sanctions lifted after he criticized Ukraine invasion, report says. “Russian oligarch Arkady Volozh will be the first to formally ask for sanctions to be lifted after condemning Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, a report says. The Financial Times reported that Volozh’s lawyers had petitioned the European Union to repeal sanctions placed on the tech billionaire last June after he chose to criticize Putin’s offensive 18 months after Russia’s invasion.”

AFP: Microsoft’s Bing, LinkedIn vows more ads transparency. “Microsoft will provide more information on targeted adverts and protect users against any new risks from artificial intelligence, the company vowed Friday, as stringent EU rules on tech platforms enter into force. Internet giants must now enforce the milestone EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA), which demands they protect users online from harmful content and be more transparent about their algorithms.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Washington Post: Behind the AI boom, an army of overseas workers in ‘digital sweatshops’. “In the Philippines, one of the world’s biggest destinations for outsourced digital work, former employees say that at least 10,000 of these workers do this labor on a platform called Remotasks, which is owned by the $7 billion San Francisco start-up Scale AI. Scale AI has paid workers at extremely low rates, routinely delayed or withheld payments and provided few channels for workers to seek recourse, according to interviews with workers, internal company messages and payment records, and financial statements.” This is a gift article, so you should find no paywall.

Asahi Shimbun: Expert: ‘Yokai’ ghouls dwell in ChatGPT in modern times. “Masanobu Kagawa [is] the chief curator at the Hyogo Prefectural Museum of History, and the first Japanese to get his doctorate in the study of yokai. In an interview with The Asahi Shimbun, Kagawa said their nonexistent existence is an essential characteristic of yokai. He also said artificial intelligences that present themselves as human are a modern form of yokai. What makes them scary is that you can’t tell them apart from humans, he added.”

CNN: Maui conspiracy theories are spreading on social media. Why this always happens after a disaster. “A slew of viral conspiracy videos on social media have made baseless claims that the Maui wildfires were started intentionally as part of a land grab, highlighting how quickly misinformation spreads after a disaster. While the cause of the fires hasn’t been determined, Hawaiian Electric — the major power company on Maui — is under scrutiny for not shutting down power lines when high winds created dangerous fire conditions.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

BBC: Auctioneer exposed by BBC admits illegally selling rare ancient coins. “A British auctioneer who was at the centre of a BBC investigation has pleaded guilty at a New York court to a series of charges in connection with unlawful sales of rare ancient coins. Richard Beale, director of London-based auction house Roma Numismatics, admitted two counts of conspiracy and three counts of criminal possession of stolen property, court documents show.”

Route Fifty: States ramp up software security standards amid growing threats. “Collaboration among states to tighten the security of cloud software is increasing under the nationwide program StateRAMP. Meanwhile, Texas is embracing its own certification effort after several high-profile cyber incidents.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Washington Monthly: Google’s Participation Trophies. ” My certificate took me just two and a half weeks to get, mainly because I learned to game the system. (I watched videos at double speed and passed quizzes by trial and error.) And when I presented my shiny new credential to prospective employers in the Washington, D.C., area and scoured job postings in Silicon Valley, my credential was less a foot in the door than a plaintive knock at firmly barred gates.”

University of Bath: Suggestible people feel more present in virtual reality – study finds. “People with vivid imaginations are more likely than others to believe they truly inhabit the worlds they visit in virtual reality (VR) according to new research led by the University of Bath.” Good morning, Internet…

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