NEW RESOURCES

Delaware.gov: DHSS Announces Launch of New Help Is Here Delaware Website. “Designed after months of listening sessions and focus groups, the new HelpIsHereDE.com is the state’s comprehensive resource for those seeking help for substance use disorder or mental illness, along with their family members, community organizations, and health care providers.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Search Engine Land: Google-Extended does not stop Google Search Generative Experience from using your site’s content. “Google-Extended, the new standalone product token, to tell Google through your robots.txt to not use your site content for Bard and Vertex AI and other AI projects does not work for the AI-answers and snapshots provided in the Search Generative Experience.”

Engadget: TikTok now lets you post directly from third-party apps. “TikTok announced a new API today that will let you post (and do other things) directly to the platform from approved third-party apps.”

UPI: Germany’s Anti-Discrimination Agency quits X over ‘massive’ surge in hate speech, disinformation. “Germany’s Anti-Discrimination Agency announced Wednesday that it was quitting Elon Musk’s X due to ‘intolerable’ levels of hate content on the platform targeting the LGBTQ community, minorities, women and Jewish people.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Fortune: Google insiders are slamming Bard for not being worth it on private chat groups: ‘What are LLMs truly useful for?’. “For months, Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Discord Inc. have run an invitation-only chat for heavy users of Bard, Google’s artificial intelligence-powered chatbot. Google product managers, designers and engineers are using the forum to openly debate the AI tool’s effectiveness and utility, with some questioning whether the enormous resources going into development are worth it.”

Wall Street Journal: Here’s How FTX Executives Secretly Spent $8 Billion in Customer Money. “The crypto exchange FTX went bust last year after executives spent billions in customer funds they had promised to safeguard. The tab was $7.7 billion, a Wall Street Journal analysis of company disclosures and legal filings shows. FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried and senior staff spent customer funds on technology investments, luxury real estate and political contributions, among other things.”

Library of Congress: Library Awards New Lewis-Houghton Civics and Democracy Initiative Grants to Organizations Developing Resources for History, Civics and Democracy Students. “The Library of Congress has awarded Lewis-Houghton Civics and Democracy Initiative grants to six organizations that are working to develop digital educational projects that teach history, civics, and democracy to secondary students using creative arts materials from the Library’s collections.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Ars Technica: Thousands of Android devices come with unkillable backdoor preinstalled. “When you buy a TV streaming box, there are certain things you wouldn’t expect it to do. It shouldn’t secretly be laced with malware or start communicating with servers in China when it’s powered up. It definitely should not be acting as a node in an organized crime scheme making millions of dollars through fraud. However, that’s been the reality for thousands of unknowing people who own cheap Android TV devices.”

Techdirt: Elon Has To Pay The Legal Fees Of Former Execs He Fired. “Elon Musk really seems to hate paying legal bills (or, really, any bills), but now he’s got a few more to cover. Bloomberg reported earlier this week that Kathaleen McCormick, Chancellor of the Delaware Court of Chancery (who is quite familiar with Elon Musk and Twitter) has ruled that exTwitter has to cover the legal fees of former CEO Parag Agrawal and former legal boss Vijaya Gadde.”

IANS: Hackers launch a cyberattack on Israeli websites. “As Hamas-Israel violence escalates, groups of hacktivists have targeted Israeli websites with floods of malicious traffic. Israeli newspaper The Jerusalem Post posted on X that its website was down ‘due to a series of cyberattacks initiated against us’ since Saturday morning when Hamas launched a surprise land, sea and air attack against Israel.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

University of Maine: UMaine leading development of new state-of-the-art tool for tracking PFAS nationwide. “University of Maine computer scientist Torsten Hahmann is spearheading the development of an interactive digital tool that will allow users to explore and analyze data on sites and sources of PFAS contamination throughout the U.S. This software will help investigators and the general public track existing PFAS hotspots, which in turn can help them identify where to test for new ones and better understand how they travel through the natural and manmade environment.”

Johns Hopkins University: As Drone Traffic Increases, Researchers Turn To AI To Help Avoid Collisions. “A team of researchers led by the Institute for Assured Autonomy’s Lanier Watkins and Louis Whitcomb has used artificial intelligence to model a system that could more safely orchestrate drone traffic by replacing some human-in-the-loop processes with autonomous decision-making. Their results appeared in IEEE’s Computer.” Good morning, Internet…

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