Month: October 2024

What's the point of recruiting hundreds of thousands of X users to fact-check misleading posts before they go viral if those users' accurate Community Notes are never displayed?

That's the question the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) is asking after digging through a million notes in a public X dataset to find out how many misleading claims spreading widely on X about the US election weren't quickly fact-checked.

In a report, the CCDH flagged 283 misleading X posts fueling election disinformation spread this year that never displayed a Community Note. Of these, 74 percent were found to have accurate notes proposed but ultimately never displayed—apparently due to toxic X users gaming Community Notes to hide information they politically disagree with.

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Halloween is upon us, which means costumes, candy, and settling in for a nice long night of scary movies. For those who crave a bit of humor with their blood-soaked scares, I've compiled a list of some of my favorite horror comedies for your viewing pleasure.

What constitutes a horror comedy? Is it merging classic creature features with goofy slapstick humor? Is it primarily super scary with a few notes of humor? Is the humor sharply satirical or primarily delivered by wisecracking characters? Is it parody? Or does good horror comedy go full meta, poking fun at the tropes while sneaking in incisive cultural commentary?

Horror comedy is all of those things and more, which is why picking films to include on this list proved so tricky. For instance, The Mummy (1999) features a classic monster, but it fits just as well in the action/comedy category, while Ghostbusters (1984) is pretty much straight-up comedy. Yet I could have included both on this list without too many complaints. In the end, I cut the list down to 20, opting for a sampler that features blockbusters, vintage films, cult classics, and contemporary offerings, each with its own unique mix of horror and comedic elements. Feel free to add your own favorites in the comments.

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In zwei Stunden von Peking nach New York, das verspricht ein chinesisches Unternehmen. Ein erster Test des Überschalljets war erfolgreich, weitere folgen. (Überschall, Flugzeug)

OpenAI hat mit ChatGPT Search eine KI-basierte Suchmaschine vorgestellt, die Google das Fürchten lehren soll. (ChatGPT, Google)

Amazons Plan, Alexa mit fortschrittlichen KI-Fähigkeiten auszustatten, ist auf technische Hindernisse gestoßen. Das Projekt verzögert sich. (Amazon Alexa, KI)

Google's stated mission is to "organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful." For a very long time, then, it has been odd that one of its biggest platforms, Android, lacked for a real default weather app. You know, weather—the kind of information that's relevant to almost everybody, every single day and is one of humanity's default topics of conversation.

Android phones had, for a while, a "Weather" widget (and an icon inside the "At a Glance" widget) that essentially provided a framed webpage of useful weather data, accompanied by a plucky frog who illustrated the conditions. The frog was popular (even getting his own New Year's doodle), and the basic weather stats were useful. But it couldn't compare to Apple's weather, which nabbed the minute-by-minute precipitation of Dark Sky and ended its life on Android. There were lots of third-party weather apps—Ars staffers like RadarScope and Carrot Weather, for example—but it remained an odd choice for Google to mostly ignore the category.

Google, and its all-in AI obsession, cedes no longer. As suggested by Google in October, and spotted by blogs like 9to5Google, an honest-to-goodness weather app, named "Weather," is rolling out to Pixel phones model 6 and newer running Android 15, having started on the Pixel 9 models. As with most Android things, the rollout is gradual, and you may not have it right away; check that you're updated to the latest Android 15 and Play Services versions to clear the way.

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More than 500 Amazon workers reportedly signed a letter to Amazon Web Services' (AWS) CEO this week, sharing their outrage over Amazon's upcoming return-to-office (RTO) policy that will force workers into offices five days per week.

In September, Amazon announced that starting in 2025, workers will no longer be allowed to work remotely twice a week. At the time, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said the move would make it easier for workers "to learn, model, practice, and strengthen our culture."

Reuters reported today that it viewed a letter from a swath of workers sent to AWS chief Matt Garman on Wednesday regarding claims he reportedly made during an all-hands meeting this month. Garman reportedly told attendees that 9 out of 10 employees he spoke with support the five-day in-office work policy. The letter called the statements “inconsistent with the experiences of many employees” and “misrepresenting the realities of working at Amazon,” Reuters reported.

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Russia has fined Google an amount that no entity on the planet could pay in hopes of getting YouTube to lift bans on Russian channels, including pro-Kremlin and state-run news outlets.

The BBC wrote that a Russian court fined Google two undecillion rubles, which in dollar terms is $20,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. The amount "is far greater than the world's total GDP, which is estimated by the International Monetary Fund to be $110 trillion."

The fine is apparently that large because it was issued several years ago and has been repeatedly doubling. An RBC news report this week provided details on the court case from an anonymous source.

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One of the biggest bummers about the modern Internet has been the decline of Google Search. Once an essential part of using the web, it's now a shadow of its former self, full of SEO-fueled junk and AI-generated spam.

On Thursday, OpenAI announced a new feature of ChatGPT that could potentially replace Google Search for some people: an upgraded web search capability for its AI assistant that provides answers with source attribution during conversations. The feature, officially called "ChatGPT with Search," makes web search automatic based on user questions, with an option to manually trigger searches through a new web search icon.

OpenAI hopes the new capability will streamline web searching by eliminating the need for multiple searches and link exploration that traditional search engines sometimes require. Users can ask follow-up questions, with ChatGPT considering the context of the entire conversation to provide answers.

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Eine japanische Forschungsgruppe hat die Daten des Schwarzen Lochs in der Mitte der Milchstraße neu analysiert. Seine Akkretionsscheibe soll länglich aussehen. (Astronomie, Wissenschaft)