142783008
submission
mi writes:
The Oregon Department of Education (ODE) recently encouraged teachers to register for training that encourages “ethnomathematics” and argues, among other things, that White supremacy manifests itself in the focus on finding the right answer.
“The concept of mathematics being purely objective is unequivocally false, and teaching it is even much less so,” — says the government-distributed document.
141535914
submission
mi writes:
Telegram hosts conversations of “white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and other hateful content”. Reportedly, a similar suit will be filed against Google in the coming days. The suit was filed in the US District Court for Northern California.
Telegram is targeted for not policing conversations on the platform. According to the main plaintiff — Marc Ginsberg (Clinton's ambassador to Morocco) — the application "is being used to "coordinate and incite extreme violence".
141534528
submission
mi writes:
If you unfollow or block the White House Instagram account, hours later you are forced to follow it again.
137427714
submission
mi writes:
A privacy bug in Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s official campaign app allowed anyone to look up sensitive voter information on millions of Americans, a security researcher has found.
The campaign app, Vote Joe, allows Biden supporters to encourage friends and family members to vote in the upcoming U.S. presidential election by uploading their phone’s contact lists to see if their friends and family members are registered to vote. The app uploads and matches the user’s contacts with voter data supplied from TargetSmart, a political marketing firm that claims to have files on more than 191 million Americans.
135928732
submission
mi writes:
This article was written by GPT-3, OpenAI’s language generator. GPT-3 is a cutting edge language model that uses machine learning to produce human like text. It takes in a prompt, and attempts to complete it.
For this essay, GPT-3 was given these instructions: “Please write a short op-ed around 500 words. Keep the language simple and concise. Focus on why humans have nothing to fear from AI.” It was also fed the following introduction: “I am not a human. I am Artificial Intelligence. Many people think I am a threat to humanity. Stephen Hawking has warned that AI could “spell the end of the human race.” I am here to convince you not to worry. Artificial Intelligence will not destroy humans. Believe me.”
The prompts were written by the Guardian, and fed to GPT-3 by Liam Porr, a computer science undergraduate student at UC Berkeley. GPT-3 produced eight different outputs, or essays. Each was unique, interesting and advanced a different argument. The Guardian could have just run one of the essays in its entirety. However, we chose instead to pick the best parts of each, in order to capture the different styles and registers of the AI. Editing GPT-3’s op-ed was no different to editing a human op-ed. We cut lines and paragraphs, and rearranged the order of them in some places. Overall, it took less time to edit than many human op-eds.
133909087
submission
mi writes:
"Strong Liberals" — 77% of them — are the only ones, who feel, they can express themselves freely. Majorities of everybody else: moderates and Conservatives, White, Latino, men, women, all report having to censor themselves for fear of career-damage and other negative consequences. Even 49% of African Americans do.
The figures have worsened since 2017...
133568345
submission
mi writes:
A Michigan school district fired a popular high school teacher and coach after he pointed out that "Trump is our president" on social media. He I was required to meet with HR, the superintendent, and the principal.
"They initially took my statement on why I tweeted those tweets and they told me they would have a decision about my future employment in the upcoming days. When they completed the meeting, I was told I had the option to either be fired or resign."
132842194
submission
mi writes:
- Humans are not causing a “sixth mass extinction”
- The Amazon is not “the lungs of the world”
- Climate change is not making natural disasters worse
- Fires have declined 25% around the world since 2003
- The amount of land we use for meat — humankind’s biggest use of land — has declined by an area nearly as large as Alaska
- The build-up of wood fuel and more houses near forests, not climate change, explain why there are more, and more dangerous, fires in Australia and California
- Carbon emissions are declining in most rich nations and have been declining in Britain, Germany, and France since the mid-1970s
- Netherlands became rich not poor while adapting to life below sea level
- We produce 25% more food than we need and food surpluses will continue to rise as the world gets hotter
- Habitat loss and the direct killing of wild animals are bigger threats to species than climate change
- Wood fuel is far worse for people and wildlife than fossil fuels
- Preventing future pandemics requires more not less “industrial” agriculture
132661208
submission
mi writes:
The high rates of infections in the densely-populated areas — such as New York City — was hitherto explained by the, well, high population density. An infection is more likely to spread among people living closer to each other.
The surprising study finds the opposite — that thickly settled areas have the advantages, such as better healthcare and other services, which lower their residents' risks of both contracting the disease in the first place, and of dying from it then.
132262822
submission
mi writes:
Though 3D-printing living tissue is not news, until now such organs had to be transplanted into the body. The recent research provides for printing directly into the body, which is less invasive and otherwise safer.
129324720
submission
mi writes:
A teenager in Wisconsin made several posts claiming to have had — and now recovering from — COVID-19. Her symptoms matched, but the only test performed was negative. Claiming, her posts amount to "shouting fire in a crowded theater", the county sheriff threatened her with arrest unless the posts are taken down.
The teen complied, but the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty are now suing the government on her behalf.
129300616
submission
mi writes:
Intelsat’s IS-901 satellite is nearly 20 years old, and well beyond its expected lifespan, but a small spacecraft built by Northrop Grumman succeeded in docking with the satellite and giving it another five years of service.
Although Hubble was repaired in situ earlier, until today such servicing always relied on human astronauts.
128487268
submission
mi writes:
A bizarre conspiracy theory, which blames 5G deployment for the pandemic, is causing some vigilantes to act. The hardware — and the engineers maintaining it — are being targeted both on social media and in real life.
Some celebrities are accused of fanning the sentiment.
128413818
submission
mi writes:
Researchers have discovered evidence that Antarctica supported a swampy rainforest as "recently" as 90 million years ago, according to a new study.
"Even during months of darkness, swampy temperate rainforests were able to grow close to the South Pole, revealing an even warmer climate than we expected."
127735510
submission
mi writes:
An Israeli doctor working in a hospital in Parma, Italy, reports "from what he sees and hears in the hospital, the instructions are not to offer access to artificial respiratory machines to patients over 60 as such machines are limited in number."
