I had ChatGPT build me a free PDF editor because I didn't trust it to change my files - it worked!

The smartest way to use AI may not be letting it touch your files, but asking it to write software that handles them safely - ...
Columbia Journalism Review

Scraper Factories

Writing a scraper or two for a story is (usually) a fairly straightforward task for a data journalist who knows a bit of code ...
IEEE

Automating Web Data Collection: Challenges, Solutions, and Python-Based Strategies for Effective Web Scraping

Abstract: The process of collecting and retrieving such a massive amount of data is difficult, especially when manual approach is the only option. Instead, we can use web scraping to automate the ...
Reason

Data Centers Use Less Water Than Almond Farms—and Do More Good

California's almond farms consume 4.2 billion gallons of waters per day, according to Reason's Christian Britschgi. Data centers consume just 46 million gallons per day. Those numbers will certainly ...
The Guardian

Why data sleuths are archiving the Jeffrey Epstein files: ‘We want to provide some clarity’

Tommy Carstensen oversees one of the most sophisticated archives of Epstein materials, while Tristan Lee’s database allows searches of faces who appear in the files Before the US Department of Justice ...
CalMatters

Data centers are guzzling California’s water. We have no idea how much

Data centers are expanding into water-stressed California communities. Lax disclosure rules keep the public in the dark about actual water usage. Welcome to CalMatters, the only nonprofit newsroom ...
Lansing State Journal

The U.S. government released UFO files. Here's how you can see them

President Donald Trump's administration on Friday, May 8, released a trove of documents and photos related to phenomena known as UFOs through a publicly accessible website. The release comes after ...