Category: Flotsam-and-Jetsam

In Leak, Facebook Partner Brags About Listening to Your Phone’s Microphone to Serve Ads for Stuff You Menti

“We know what you’re thinking. Is this even legal?”

In Leak, Facebook Partner Brags About Listening to Your Phone’s Microphone to Serve Ads for Stuff You Mention

In a pitch deck to prospective customers, one of Facebook’s alleged marketing partners explained how it listens to users’ smartphone microphones and advertises to them accordingly.

As 404 Media reports based on documents leaked to its reporters, the TV and radio news giant Cox Media Group (CMG) claims that its so-called “Active Listening” software uses artificial intelligence (AI) to “capture real-time intent data by listening to our conversations.”

“Advertisers can pair this voice-data with behavioral data to target in-market consumers,” the deck continues.

In the same slideshow, CMG counted Facebook, Google, and Amazon as clients of its “Active Listening” service. After 404 reached out to Google about its partnership, the tech giant removed the media group from the site for its “Partners Program,” which prompted Meta, the owner of Facebook, to admit that it is reviewing CMG to see if it violates any of its terms of service.

An Amazon spokesperson, meanwhile, told 404 that its Ads arm “has never worked with CMG on this program and has no plans to do so. The spox added, confusingly, that if one of its marketing partners violates its rules, the company will take action.

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The Tipping Points of Climate Change — and Where We Stand

We’re nearly halfway through the 2020s, dubbed the most decisive decade for action on climate change. Where exactly do things stand? Climate impact scholar Johan Rockström offers the most up-to-date scientific assessment of the state of the planet and explains what must be done to preserve Earth’s resilience to human pressure.

Ishmael Series

Ishmael Series

Descriptions: https://www.goodreads.com/series/96452-ishmael

Download: https://libgen.rs/fiction/4EE3B6D8E3F84E05A344237F3B8CEB30

Reporting on Doomsday Scenarios | 60 Minutes Full Episodes

From 2022, Jon Wertheim’s report on “preppers” who are gearing up for extreme catastrophes. From 2008, Scott Pelley’s visit to the “doomsday vault” inside a mountain near the North Pole, built to warehouse backup copies of all the world’s crops. From 2023, Pelley’s interviews with scientists who say the planet is in the midst of a sixth mass extinction with Earth’s wildlife running out of places to live. And also from 2023, Bill Whitaker’s story on virus hunters who are searching for new pathogens to help prevent another pandemic.

12,000-year-old ritual passed down 500 generations may be world’s oldest

Professor Bruno David (L) and Uncle Russell Mullett (R) pictured in the cave. courtesy of Jess Shapiro for GLaWAC
Professor Bruno David (L) and Uncle Russell Mullett (R) pictured in the cave. courtesy of Jess Shapiro for GLaWAC

Buried deep in an Australian cave, archaeologists have uncovered evidence that an Aboriginal ritual may have been passed down 500 generations and survived 12,000 years, making it the oldest known continuous cultural practice in the world, according to a new study.

LINK: https://edition.cnn.com/2024/07/04/science/worlds-oldest-ritual-intl-scli-scn/index.html?iid=cnn_buildContentRecirc_end_recirc

The big environmental costs of rising demand for big data to power the internet

The big environmental costs of rising demand for big data to power the internet

The rise of artificial intelligence is requiring faster and bigger computations for even simple tasks compared to, say, a Google search. It’s adding to the demand for more internet data centers, but these facilities come at a big environmental cost, especially for the communities that host them. Science journalist Sachi Kitajima Mulkey joins Ali Rogin to discuss.

LINK: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/the-big-environmental-costs-of-rising-demand-for-big-data-to-power-the-internet

‘What if there just is no solution?’ How we are all in denial about the climate crisis

In his new book, Tad DeLay suggests there is no rosy roadmap to go forward – but there are things we can do

Supporters of the Fridays for Future climate action movement protest in Berlin before June 2024’s EU parliamentary elections. Photograph: Omer Messinger/Getty Images
Supporters of the Fridays for Future climate action movement protest in Berlin before June 2024’s EU parliamentary elections. Photograph: Omer Messinger/Getty Images

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You are in denial about the climate crisis. We all are, argues the American scholar Tad DeLay. Right-wing climate deniers are not the only ones with a problem, he says when we speak in early June after the release of his book, Future of Denial. For denial doesn’t only amount to rejecting the evidence, he argues – it also consists of denying our role in the climate crisis; absolving ourselves through “carbon offsets, hybrid cars, local purchases, recycling”. And in this, far more of us are implicated.

LINK: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/jun/20/what-if-there-just-is-no-solution-how-we-are-all-in-denial-about-the-climate-crisis

 

‘The big story of the 21st century’: is this the most shocking documentary of the year?

There’s no doctrine for what we’re going through right now. It’s just capitalism’ … a scene from The Grab. Photograph: Magnolia
There’s no doctrine for what we’re going through right now. It’s just capitalism’ … a scene from The Grab. Photograph: Magnolia

Six years in the making, jaw-dropping new film The Grab shows a secret scramble by governments and private firms to buy up global resources,

LINK: https://www.theguardian.com/film/article/2024/jun/12/the-grab-documentary-review#webview=1

This is Not a Game – Marc Fennel

Marc Fennel This is Not a Game

 

Written by Marc Fennel
Format: M4B

This Is Not a Game is the extraordinary untold story of the internet’s first conspiracy theory, the legend of Ong’s Hat.
Marc Fennell will dive deep into a previously unexplored world of tech hippies, eccentric web subcultures, and simmering paranoia, uncovering how this tongue-in-cheek artistic experiment backfired on its creator and went on to influence much of what’s wrong with the internet today.

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