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Daily Archives: January 21, 2018

Nearly all members of National Park Service advisory panel resign in frustration

Washington Post – “More than three-quarters of the members of a federally chartered board advising the National Park Service have quit out of frustration that Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke had refused to meet with them or convene a single meeting last year. The resignation of 10 out of 12 National Park System Advisory Board members leaves the federal government without a functioning body to designate national historic or natural landmarks. It also underscores the extent to which federal advisory bodies have become marginalized under the Trump administration. In May 2017, Zinke suspended all outside committees while his staff reviewed their composition and work. In a letter to the secretary on Monday, departing board chairman Tony Knowles, a former Alaska governor, wrote that he and eight other members “have stood by waiting for the chance to meet and continue the partnership . . . as prescribed by law.” All of the signatories, who serve as unpaid volunteers, had terms set to expire in May., “We understand the complexity of transition but our requests to engage have been ignored and the matters on which we wanted to brief the new Department team are clearly not part of its agenda,” Knowles wrote. “I wish the National Park System and Service well and will always be dedicated to their success.”..

  • Letter of resignation from Carolyn “Carrie” Hessler Radelet, National Park System Advisory board member – “This is the Jan. 17 letter of resignation from Carolyn “Carrie” Hessler Radelet, a National Park System Advisory board member.”

Twitter says it exposed nearly 700,000 people to Russian propaganda during US election

Twitter Public Policy News Release: “…As previously announced, we identified and suspended a number of accounts that were potentially connected to a propaganda effort by a Russian government-linked organization known as the Internet Research Agency (IRA). Consistent with our commitment to transparency, we are emailing notifications to 677,775 people in the United States who followed… Continue Reading

EFF and Lookout Uncover New Malware Espionage Campaign Infecting Thousands Around the World

“The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and mobile security company Lookout have uncovered a new malware espionage campaign infecting thousands of people in more than 20 countries. Hundreds of gigabytes of data has been stolen, primarily through mobile devices compromised by fake secure messaging clients. The trojanized apps, including Signal and WhatsApp, function like the legitimate… Continue Reading

Revealing True Emotions Through Micro-Expressions: A Machine Learning Approach

Facial recognition applications and data mining are now moving deeper into the realm of tiny expressions we make without perhaps being aware, but nevertheless can be identified, tracked and exploited through a “Micro-Expression Recognition System” “Micro-expressions–involuntary, fleeting facial movements that reveal true emotions–hold valuable information for scenarios ranging from security interviews and interrogations to media… Continue Reading

World Report 2018: Fighting for Rights Succeeds

Principled Politicians and Popular Protest Weaken Authoritarian Populist Agenda – “Political leaders willing to fight for human rights principles showed that they could limit authoritarian populist agendas, Human Rights Watch said today in its World Report 2018, reviewing events of the past year. When combined with mobilized publics and effective multilateral actors, these leaders demonstrated… Continue Reading

Report – Secret Origins of Evidence in US Criminal Cases

Human Rights Watch Report – Secret Origins of Evidence in US Criminal Cases “In the United States today, a growing body of evidence suggests that the federal government is deliberately concealing methods used by intelligence or law enforcement agencies to identify or investigate suspects—including methods that may be illegal. It does so by creating a… Continue Reading

U.S. Welfare Reform Efforts Have Been Based on an Availability of Work that Doesn’t Always Exist

“Hilary W. Hoynes, an NBER research associate and professor of economics and public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, specializes in the study of poverty, food and nutrition programs, and the impacts of government tax and transfer programs on low income families. In this video, she outlines successes and failures of federal efforts to… Continue Reading

A List Of Top Data Mining Algorithms

Kirti Bakshi: “Data mining is known as an interdisciplinary subfield of computer science and basically is a computing process of discovering patterns in large data sets. It is considered as an essential process where intelligent methods are applied in order to extract data patterns. Given below is a list of Top Data Mining Algorithms…” Continue Reading

“focus not on the frequency of correctness, but on the magnitude of correctness.”

Farnam Street – “All decisions involve potential tradeoffs and opportunity costs. The question is, how can we make the best possible choices when the factors involved are often so complicated and confusing? How can we determine which statistics and metrics are worth paying attention to? How do we think about averages? Expected value is one… Continue Reading

An Interdisciplinary Centre for Turing Studies

“Alan Turing did revolutionary work in multiple fields, including mathematical logic, mathematics, cryptography, computer science, philosophy of computing, philosophy of mathematics, mathematical biology & artificial life, artificial intelligence, and cognitive science & philosophy of mind. The Turing Centre at ETH Zurich is a unique interdisciplinary research and teaching unit for Turing Studies. It fosters investigation… Continue Reading