Ai, Pinterest, Steganography, More: Thursday Afternoon Researchbuzz, April 24, 2025

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Search Engine Journal: AI Use Jumps to 78% Among Businesses As Costs Drop. “Stanford University’s latest AI Index Report reveals a significant increase in AI adoption among businesses. Now 78% of organizations use AI, up from 55% a year ago. At the same time, the cost of using AI has dropped, becoming 280 times cheaper in less than two years.”

Mashable: Pinterest wants teens to log off during school hours . “Students won’t be using Pinterest during class — or, at least, they will be heavily discouraged from doing so. The social media app is experimenting with a prompt that will encourage American and Canadian users between the ages of 13 (the minimum age for account holders) and 17 to close the app and pause notifications during typical school hours (Monday to Friday, 8 a.m. to 3 p.m.).”

USEFUL STUFF

Hongkiat: Hiding Secret Files in Images Using Steghide. “Ever wanted to hide sensitive information in plain sight? That’s exactly what steganography allows you to do. Unlike encryption, which makes data unreadable but obvious that something is hidden, steganography conceals the very existence of the secret data. Steghide is a powerful Linux tool that lets you embed any file into an image with minimal visual changes to the original picture.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

INFO 653 Knowledge Organization: Recovering Lost Media. “The Lost Media Wiki is a grassroots community lead project to track down and archive pieces of media (video, audio, video games, art, or printed) that have been lost or been made inaccessible to the public. Beginning in 2012 on its previous website, the wikia has grown into a massive cataloging initiative with a community of over 17,000 members who search the internet for relics of the past.”

Fast Company: 20 years ago, this simple video rewired the way we share our lives online. “The elephant enclosure at your local zoo is an interesting place to be. But until 20 years ago, it was somewhere you’d encounter in person—with reverence and intimacy. A video uploaded by YouTube cofounder Jawed Karim 20 years ago today changed that. Karim wanted to test out the capabilities of a new website he and his colleagues had developed—what they called YouTube—and needed content to share with the world.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Middle East Monitor: UAE to use AI to create, regulate laws. “The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is set to use artificial intelligence (AI) to write and regulate laws in the Gulf state, in the first such decision to be taken by a nation in the international community. Last week, ministers in the UAE approved the creation of the Office of Regulatory Intelligence, a new cabinet body intended to oversee the use of AI in the creation of new legislation and the reformation of current legislation.”

Ars Technica: OpenAI wants to buy Chrome and make it an “AI-first” experience. “The remedy phase of Google’s antitrust trial is underway, with the government angling to realign Google’s business after the company was ruled a search monopolist. The Department of Justice is seeking a plethora of penalties, but perhaps none as severe as forcing Google to sell Chrome. But who would buy it? An OpenAI executive says his employer would be interested.”

The Register: Chinese snoops use stealth RAT to backdoor US orgs – still active last week. “A cyberspy crew or individual with ties to China’s Ministry of State Security has infected global organizations with a remote access trojan (RAT) that’s ‘even better’ than Cobalt Strike, using this stealthy backdoor to enable its espionage and access resale campaigns.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

NLNet: 42 Free and Open Source Projects Receive Funding to Reclaim the Public Nature of the Internet. “It is wonderful to see the growing number of people working on digital commons, inventing and improving technologies to the benefit of all humanity. 42 of such projects have been selected for funding in the October call of the NGI Zero Commons Fund. In terms of applications, it was the largest call round in NGI Zero’s life time.”

BBC: Inside the desperate rush to save decades of US scientific data from deletion. “No one knows when the next alert or request to save a chunk of US government-held climate data will come in. Such data, long available online, keeps getting taken down by US President Donald Trump’s administration. For the last six months or so, Cathy Richards has been entrenched in the response. She works for one of several organisations bent on downloading and archiving public data before it disappears.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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