NEW RESOURCES

US Department of Commerce: Commerce’s NOAA Releases New Monthly Tool to Predict High-Tide Flooding. “As high tide flooding continues to break records, the Commerce Department’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) released a new monthly tool to predict high tide flooding. The new high tide flooding outlook will help coastal communities better understand when and where high tide flooding may occur and the likelihood of high tide flooding for each day in the calendar year.”

OPI: On Bruno Pereira’s birthday, Opi, Coiab and Opan launch a platform to monitor isolated indigenous peoples. (Everything with regards to this article has been machine-translated from Portuguese.) “The tool gathers information from public databases and field surveys of the Observatory’s networks. Combined, this information makes it possible to analyze the living conditions and territories of these groups. The initiative is a collaboration between [Observatory of Isolated Indigenous Peoples and of Recent Contact] and the Coordination of Indigenous Organizations of the Brazilian Amazon (Coiab) and Operation Amazônia Nativa (Opan).”

USEFUL STUFF

Digital Inspiration: Post Google Forms Responses to Discord Channels. “Learn how to automatically send form responses collected through Google Forms on a Discord channel with the help of Document Studio. The tutorial also provide instructions on how to use Apps Script to post form responses to Discord using webhooks.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

404 Media: ‘Life or Death:’ AI-Generated Mushroom Foraging Books Are All Over Amazon. “Amazon has an AI-generated books problem that’s been documented by journalists for months. Many of these books are obviously gibberish designed to make money. But experts say that AI-generated foraging books, specifically, could actually kill people if they eat the wrong mushroom because a guidebook written by an AI prompt said it was safe. The New York Mycological Society (NYMS) warned on social media that the proliferation of AI-generated foraging books could ‘mean life or death.'”

The Verge: The end of the Googleverse. “For two decades, Google Search was the largely invisible force that determined the ebb and flow of online content. Now, for the first time since Google’s launch, a world without it at the center actually seems possible. We’re clearly at the end of one era and at the threshold of another. But to understand where we’re headed, we have to look back at how it all started.” Interesting article to read as someone who was there for all of it and has drawn very different conclusions in some cases.

SECURITY & LEGAL

Reuters: Judge allows age-discrimination lawsuit against Elon Musk’s X to proceed. “A California federal judge has refused to dismiss a lawsuit accusing X, the social media service formerly called Twitter, of disproportionately laying off older workers when Elon Musk acquired the company last year. U.S. District Judge Susan Illston on Tuesday said the plaintiff in the proposed class action, John Zeman, had provided enough evidence that the mass layoffs had a greater impact on older employees to continue pursing the case.”

New Arab: Saudi critic sentenced to death for social media posts. “Saeed al-Ghamdi, Mohammed’s brother and an activist living in exile outside Saudi Arabia, said the case against Mohammed was at least partly built on posts on X, formerly Twitter, criticising the government and expressing support for ‘prisoners of conscience’ like the jailed religious clerics Salman al-Awda and Awad al-Qarni. Mohammed al-Ghamdi’s account on X had only nine followers, according to the Gulf Centre for Human Rights.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Engadget: Americans growing anxious as AI adoption expands, Pew Research finds . “Americans have grown more worried about AI in the last nine months. A new survey from the Pew Research Center [ed note: PEW PEW PEW PEW PEW!] indicates 52 percent of respondents are more concerned than excited about rising artificial intelligence use, up 14 points since December. Meanwhile, only 10 percent say they’re more excited than worried, while another 36 percent described their views as equally balanced.”

TechCrunch: In Threads’ dwindling engagement, social media’s flawed hypothesis is laid bare. “The hard truth behind the phenomenon? For too long, social media platforms have been operating as if connectivity provides the same fulfillment as human connection. The result is, two decades later, social media’s driven our culture and communal well-being to an unprecedented loneliness epidemic that no platform seems capable of fixing, let alone addressing. It’s time for a hard reset.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

University of Central Florida: Limbitless Solutions Receives Epic MegaGrant to Create Multiplayer Prosthetics-Training Game. “UCF professors and nonprofit organization Limbitless Solutions have received an Epic MegaGrant from Epic Games, known for operating Fortnite and developing Unreal Engine. Limbitless Solutions is known for developing expressive, 3D-printed arms and accessibility-focused video game training. Their training games directly support producing and delivering cost-free prosthetic limbs for the limb-difference community.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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