Serendipity35

Google Search has integrated a feature that links directly to the Wayback Machine, allowing users to access archived versions of webpages through search results.

The Wayback Machine is an online archive created by the Internet Archive, a non-profit organization. It allows users to access and view historical snapshots of web pages, dating back to the late 1990s. Essentially, it's like a digital time machine that lets you see how websites looked in the past. This can be useful for research, preserving digital history, or just satisfying curiosity.

By clicking the three dots next to a search result and selecting "More About This Page," users can view how a webpage appeared at different points in time. The collaboration enhances public access to web history, ensuring that digital records remain available for future generations.

Source  https://blog.archive.org/2024/09/11/new-feature-alert-access-archived-webpages-directly-through-google-search/

ChatGPT has received a lot of attention for about a year, and it has also garnered competition. Google's entry into the AI for the masses is Gemini which has excellent web browsing and Google app integrations. Gemini provides results with often cited sources and links and has ‘Search Related Topics’ feature under some of its results allowing you to explore other search avenues you might have not considered initially. ChatGPT's paid version crawls the web but is not as effective as Gemini and for citations you need to explicitly prompt it to do so.

Gemini and ChatGPT generate images but Gemini does it for free while ChatGPT limits this function to paid plans with access to DALL-3. Then again, ChatGPT paid version might be worth it because the quality of DALL-3 images are better than those of Gemini.

Here is a features comparison from another site.

 

As the new school year begins for all students this week, a series titled "Parental Control" appears from Mozilla (Firefox) about ways to empower parents for some technology challenges. That sounds like a good thing, but particularly when it applies to schools, parental control has cons along with pros.

Many digital platforms offer parental control settings. The most common and most popular allows parents to shield young people from “inappropriate” content. Restricting "mature content" and what is "inappropriate" takes us into a controversial area. Who defines what should be restricted? Mozilla says that "the way platforms identify what that means is far from perfect."

YouTube has apologized after its family-friendly “Restricted Mode” recently blocked videos by gay, bisexual and transgender creators, sparking complaints from users. Restricted Mode is an optional parental-control feature that users can activate to avoid content that’s been flagged by an algorithm.

That example takes me back to the earliest days of the Internet in K-12 schools when filters would block searches for things like "breast cancer" because "breast" was on the list of blocked words.

Limiting screen time is another strategy and is within a parent's control but is certainly controversial within a family. Kids don't like their screen time to be limited.

Mozilla actually had questions for itself about what to call the series. They quote Jenny Radesky, an MD and Associate Professor of Pediatrics-Developmental/Behavioral at the University of Michigan, as saying that “Parental mediation is [a better] term, parental engagement is another – and probably better because it implies meaningful discussion or involvement to help kids navigate media, rather than using controlling or restricting approaches.” She pointed to research that suggests letting children manage their own media consumption may be more effective than parental control settings offered by apps.

The internet has risks, but so do parental controls. Many kids in the LGBTQI+ community can be made vulnerable by tech monitoring tools.

Sensitive information about young people can be exposed to teachers and campus administrators through the school devices they use.

As parents and eductaors, we want to protect students, especially the youngest ones. We als want to, as a society, instill in younger generations why privacy matters.

RESOURCES

Electronic Frontier Foundation https://www.eff.org/search/site/parents

Mozilla https://blog.mozilla.org/en/internet-culture/deep-dives/parental-controls-internet-safety-for-kids/

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