Calishat: ResearchBuzz Firehose Turns 10. “I started ResearchBuzz in 1998 after finishing the 2nd edition of Official Netscape Guide to Internet Research. As time went by I started feeling the lack of organization. I was linking to and looking at lots and lots of resources, but I was posting them in aggregate newsletters which made specific resources tough to find. I spent some time thinking […]
https://rbfirehose.com/2025/06/22/calishat-researchbuzz-firehose-turns-10/
Have you noticed how your phone seems to know what you're about to type? That’s thanks to predictive text algorithms, and one of the best examples is Google's Gboard.
Gboard uses AI to learn from your typing habits. It remembers the words you use often and even picks up on your writing style. The more you type, the smarter it gets at suggesting the next word. This helps you type faster and with fewer mistakes. But how does it work? Gboard uses a method called federated learning. This means it learns from your data without sending your private information to the cloud. Instead, it trains its AI directly on your phone, keeping your information safe and secure.
So, every time your phone predicts your next word or corrects a typo, it’s AI making your life easier while respecting your privacy.
What tech term would you like us to break down next? Share in the comments!
Twitter is only getting worse, Google’s search engine is filling up with infosewage.
At this point I’ve been writing about search engines for almost 30 years and I’m discouraged. It seems to be more and more about giving the shareholders dollars and selling advertising than it is helping people find things.
Was it always that way? Possibly but not this baldly.
We are surrounded by endless authoritative structures — FCC license databases, local business license records, secretary of state business filings, local government resource lists — and they are so rarely applied when we’re searching for real, true information.
Why?
There are structured resource lists available from places like Wikipedia that we could apply to our general Web searches.
We don’t.
Well, they don’t. I do. And I will keep working on this problem. I’m only one person and I don’t count for much but I deeply believe there are ways we can counter what’s happening and I will keep trying to make tools for it and I will keep sharing them with you. It’s important.
#researchbuzz #socialmedia #news
https://researchbuzz.me/2023/10/10/working-on-mastodon-content-curation-tools-as-twitter-continues-to-decline/
