Wednesday, February 15, 2023

5 New Web Search Apps to Make Google Better or Replace Google

Years later, at a seminar in California, a student asked Stoppard, “Did you get into the theatre by accident?” “Of course,” he said innocently. “One day, I tripped and fell against a typewriter, and the result was ‘Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.’”

~ Tomáš Sträussler

After 900 pages, the legendary Tom Stoppard is still keeping his secrets


Mike Elgan – “The big news today is Google Bard vs. ChatGPT-infused Bing. But the real news is that the search engine is dead.” Not sure about that.


5 New Web Search Apps to Make Google Better or Replace Google Make Use Of: “Google is the biggest web search engine in the world. But the web keeps changing, and you need tools to find the right content quickly, when Google can’t. These new search apps offer different ways to make Google better. Some augment search results with ChatGPT or social media searches, while others offer features that Google has discarded or never offered…”


Welcome to the dark side: The rise of tanker shipping’s ‘shadow fleet’ Freight Waves


Big Pharma’s Patent Monopolies and Corruption Are Costing Americans Big Dollars Dean Baker, DC Report

 

The Next Generation Of Large Language ModelsForbes. “1) Models that can generate their own training data to improve themselves.” For some definition of “improve.”


 feedle is:

  • A search engine for blogs and podcasts.
  • Find what you are looking for across millions of blog posts and podcast episodes. Every search is an RSS feed.
  • Subscribe and stay up-to-date when a new result matches your criteria.’
  • A perfect match Discover content creators you may not know about, all from a single RSS feed, solely based on your interests.

Tech Republic: “New research from NCC Group and Abnormal Security shows clouds and a bit of silver to line them: Ransomware attacks declined last year, but business email compromises increased — massively for smaller businesses — and a third of toxic emails got through their human gateways. According to risk management firm NCC Group, there was a 5% drop in ransomware attacks last year — from 2,667 attacks in 2021 to 2,531 attacks in 2022 — although between February and April there was an uptick due to LockBit activity during the Russia-Ukraine war. In its just-released 2022 Annual H1 Threat Monitor, which follows incidents identified by its managed detection and response service and global cyber incident response team, the NCC Group reported:

  • The Industrials sector was the most targeted by criminal gangs for a second year running.
  • North America (44% of attacks) and Europe (35%) were the most targeted regions.
  • There were 230,519 DDoS events across 2022 with 45% targeted at the U.S., 27% of which occurred in January.
  • LockBit was responsible for 33% of the ransomware attacks (846) monitored by NCC

According to NCC Group, the most targeted sectors in 2022 were: industrials, with 804 organizations hit, constituting 32% of attacks; consumer cyclicals, attacked 487 times for 20% of attacks; and the technology sector, targeted 263 times for 10% of all attacks. 

Notably, hotels and entertainment enterprises, specialty retailers, homebuilding and construction supply retailers, and financial services dominated cyclicals targets. Meanwhile, software and IT services were the most targeted sector within technology…”



Motherboard: “Up to 75 percent of books published before 1964 may now be in the public domain, according to researchers at the New York Public Library. On January 1, 2023, a swath of books, films, and songs entered the public domain. The public domain is not a place—it refers to all the creative works not protected by an intellectual property law like copyright.  Creative works may not have intellectual property protections for a number of reasons. In most cases, the rights have expired or have been forfeited. Basically, no one holds the exclusive rights to these works, meaning that living artists today can sample and build off those works legally without asking anyone’s permission to do so.  That’s why the New York Public Library (NYPL) has been reviewing the U.S. Copyright Office’s official registration and renewals records for creative works whose copyrights haven’t been renewed, and have thus been overlooked as part of the public domain.  The books in question were published between 1923 and 1964, before changes to U.S. copyright law removed the requirement for rights holders to renew their copyrights. 

According to Greg Cram, associate general counsel and director of information policy at NYPL, an initial overview of books published in that period shows that around 65 to 75 percent of rights holders opted not to renew their copyrights.  “That’s sort of a staggering figure,” Cram told Motherboard. “That’s 25 to 35 percent of books that were renewed, while the rest were not. That’s interesting for me as we think about copyright policy going forward.”