Russia says it foiled assassination attempts on top media figures Al Jazeera
Thousands of Russian officials to give up iPhones over US spying fears FT
Britons are ‘pulling their own teeth out with pliers’ because they can’t access NHS dentistsSky News. Reversion to the mean….
Why the OBR’s view of the economy is so wrong Funding the Future
Report – Meta and Tax Prep Companies “Recklessly” Shared Taxpayers’ Data
Elizabeth Warren: “Today I released a new 54-page report revealing that Big Tax Prep companies have recklessly shared personal and financial data of millions of taxpayers with Big Tech for years. Regulators need to fully investigate and prosecute those who violated the law… Via The MarkUp: “Meta and major tax preparation companies inappropriately shared millions of taxpayers’ financial data for years, according to a congressional report released today that was spurred by a Markup article. Our investigation, which was published in November, revealed how tax filing services including H&R Block, TaxAct, and TaxSlayer were transmitting data to Facebook’s parent company, Meta, through a tool called the Meta Pixel.
The data was sent as taxpayers filed their taxes and included personal information like first and last names, income, filing status, and refund amounts.
Some data was also sent to Google through its analytics tools, and Google was also a subject of the congressional investigation. Today’s report from lawmakers was informed by interviews with representatives of Meta, Google, and major tax prep services. It cited and confirmed The Markup’s report and chided the tax companies for being ”shockingly careless with their treatment of taxpayer data” and the tech firms for acting “with stunning disregard for taxpayer privacy.”
CNN: “…The complaint alleges that Google “has been secretly stealing everything ever created and shared on the internet by hundreds of millions of Americans” and using this data to train its AI products, such as its chatbot Bard. The complaint also claims Google has taken “virtually the entirety of our digital footprint,” including “creative and copywritten works” to build its AI products. The complaint points to a recent update to Google’s privacy policy that explicitly states the company may use publicly accessible information to train its AI models and tools such as Bard. In response to an earlier Verge report on the update, the company said its policy “has long been transparent that Google uses publicly available information from the open web to train language models for services like Google Translate. This latest update simply clarifies that newer services like Bard are also included.” […] The suit is seeking injunctive relief in the form of a temporary freeze on commercial access to and commercial development of Google’s generative AI tools like Bard. It is also seeking unspecified damages and payments as financial compensation to people whose data was allegedly misappropriated by Google. The firm says it has lined up eight plaintiffs, including a minor. “Google needs to understand that ‘publicly available’ has never meant free to use for any purpose,” Tim Giordano, one of the attorneys at Clarkson bringing the suit against Google, told CNN in an interview. “Our personal information and our data is our property, and it’s valuable, and nobody has the right to just take it and use it for any purpose.” “The plaintiffs, the Clarkson Law Firm, previously filed a similar lawsuit against OpenAI last month.”
If God is With Us - The Catholic Thing.
It was only one generation ago that the seeming unbreakable stranglehold of communism over this part of the world came to an abrupt and unexpected end in the events of 1989 and following. And the martyrs of Auschwitz are today venerated as reminders of hope and goodness even in the midst of unspeakable evil. The history of this place is full of reminders that salvation comes, not in the empty promises of ideologies, not from the powerful of the world, but from the One who subjected Himself to death and who calls us each to follow Him up Calvary.
Against all odds, the rare Devils Hole pupfish keeps on swimming NPR
In search of fireflies, the star of summer (or do you call them lightning bugs?) Chicago Sun-Times
Cape Cod may have the highest density of great white sharks in the world National Geographic
Sea Otter on the Lam Steals Hella Surfboards and Looks Cool Doing It Gizmodo
This new fire-proof material is made from fungus and could save your home Interesting Engineering