morningbuzz

Pharmacy Deserts, Epic Games, Reddit, More: Wednesday ResearchBuzz, November 5, 2025

NEW RESOURCES

University of Southern California: USC researchers reboot national pharmacy desert map amid wave of drugstore closures. “USC researchers are launching a major reboot of their pharmacy desert mapping tool — at a time of accelerating pharmacy closures nationwide — in hopes of protecting the public’s access to essential medicines like insulin, antibiotics, contraceptives and flu shots.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Associated Press: ‘Fortnite’ maker Epic Games, Google say they’re settling 5-year legal fight over Android app store. “Video game maker Epic Games has reached a ‘comprehensive settlement’ with Google that could end its 5-year-old legal crusade targeting Google’s Play Store for Android apps. Epic and Google revealed the settlement agreement in a joint legal document they filed in a San Francisco federal court Tuesday.”

Search Engine Roundtable: Reddit: Search Traffic Flat, AI Not Traffic Driver & 50% Of Traffic Is From Google. “Reddit announced earnings late last week and it boggles me how people love this stock. I am not a financial expert of analysis but Reddit has been saying for some time that 50% of its traffic comes from Google Search. Reddit also said on this Q3 earnings call that its search traffic is flat and that AI is not a traffic driver, at least not yet.”

BBC: Reddit added to Australia’s social media ban on under-16s. “Popular forum site Reddit has been added to Australia’s world-first social media ban for children under 16 that starts next month. Live-streaming platform Kick will also be included, bringing the number of sites targeted in the ban to nine. They include Facebook, X, Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram and Threads.”

USEFUL STUFF

PC Magazine: Yes, You Can Remove Your Personal Info From Google Search—Here’s How. “Every bad actor wants personally identifiable information (PII). If they get their hands on your PII, they can use it to swindle, impersonate, or even endanger you on the internet—and in the real world. One of the prime places to find PII is on Google, and while Google can’t stop that info from appearing on other websites, you can try to remove PII from the search giant’s results. We’ll show you how.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Wall Street Journal: Tesla Is Obsessed With Musk’s Pay Package. Musk Is Obsessed With AI.. “He personally oversaw the design of a racy chatbot called Ani, an animated character with blonde pigtails and revealing outfits. Employees were compelled to turn over their biometric data to train avatars like Ani. Musk unwound by playing one of his favorite videogames, Diablo, for long stretches in his office. He tended to his children, who cycled in and out of the building.”

Gizmodo: Kim Kardashian Blames ChatGPT for Failing Law Exams. “Kim Kardashian was asked about her AI use in a new video from Vanity Fair published this week. And the reality TV star blamed OpenAI’s ChatGPT for giving her the wrong answers while studying for tests.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

The Register: UK judge delivers a ‘damp squib’ in Getty AI training case, no clear precedent set . “London’s High Court has dismissed the major portions of Getty Images’ lawsuit against generative AI firm Stability AI for training its image-generation model on copyrighted images, which some legal experts say could weaken intellectual property laws. However, others saw daylight for trademark and copyright protection in the judge’s ruling.”

The Verge: Studio Ghibli, Bandai Namco, Square Enix demand OpenAI stop using their content to train AI. “The Content Overseas Distribution Association (CODA), an anti-piracy organization representing Japanese IP holders like Studio Ghibli and Bandai Namco, released a letter last week asking OpenAI to stop using its members’ content to train Sora 2, as reported by Automaton.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Ars Technica: LLMs show a “highly unreliable” capacity to describe their own internal processes. “In the end, though, the research finds that current AI models are ‘highly unreliable’ at describing their own inner workings and that ‘failures of introspection remain the norm.’”

ABC News: AI chatbot dangers: Are there enough guardrails to protect children and other vulnerable people?. “ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Grok by X and Meta AI all allow minors to use their services, according to their terms of service. Online safety advocates say the decision by Character.AI to put up guardrails is commendable, but add that chatbots remain a danger for children and vulnerable populations.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

ABC News (Australia): Australians to get three hours of free electricity every day under solar scheme. “The federal government scheme will require retailers to offer free electricity to households for at least three hours in the middle of the day, when there is often more electricity generated than is being used, leading to very cheap or even negative wholesale prices.” Good morning, Internet…

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