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Daily Archives: April 12, 2018

NYT Book Review – A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies and Leadership – James Comey

Book Review – James Comey Has a Story to Tell. It’s Very Persuasive. “…In his absorbing new book, “A Higher Loyalty,” the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey calls the Trump presidency a “forest fire” that is doing serious damage to the country’s norms and traditions. “This president is unethical, and untethered to truth and institutional values,” Comey writes. “His leadership is transactional, ego driven and about personal loyalty.” Decades before he led the F.B.I.’s investigation into whether members of Trump’s campaign colluded with Russia to influence the 2016 election, Comey was a career prosecutor who helped dismantle the Gambino crime family; and he doesn’t hesitate in these pages to draw a direct analogy between the Mafia bosses he helped pack off to prison years ago and the current occupant of the Oval Office…”

See also – The New York Times: “The 304-page memoir by Mr. Comey is the only firsthand, insider account to emerge so far by a former Trump official describing what it was like to work in the chaotic early days of the administration. In it, Mr. Comey, a veteran law enforcement agent, writes unsparingly about Mr. Trump, calling him a tempestuous president whose connection to honesty was tenuous at best. “This president is unethical, and untethered to truth and institutional values,” Mr. Comey writes in the book, saying his service to Mr. Trump recalled for him the days when he investigated the mob in New York. “The silent circle of assent. The boss in complete control. The loyalty oaths. The us-versus-them worldview. The lying about all things, large and small, in service to some code of loyalty that put the organization above morality and above the truth.”…

OPM – Feds face sizable pay gap with private sector

Federal Times: “Federal employees on average see a 31.86 percent difference between their paychecks and those doing the same work in the private sector, according to an April 10, 2018, report submitted to the Federal Salary Council by its Locality Pay Working Group. The working group calculates the pay gap between federal employees and their… Continue Reading

The Smart Grid: Status and Outlook

CRS report via FAS – The Smart Grid: Status and Outlook. Richard J. Campbell, Specialist in Energy Policy. April 10, 2018. “The electrical grid in the United States comprises all of the power plants generating electricity, together with the transmission and distribution lines and systems that bring power to end-use customers. The “grid” also connects… Continue Reading

Facebook, This Is Not What “Complete User Control” Looks Like

EFF: “If you watched even a bit of Mark Zuckerberg’s ten hours of congressional testimony over the past two days, then you probably heard him proudly explain how users have “complete control” via “inline” privacy controls over everything they share on the platform. Zuckerberg’s language here misses the critical distinction between the information a person… Continue Reading

Think macro: record actions in Google Sheets to skip repetitive work

Google Blog: “Since their debut nearly 40 years ago, spreadsheets have remained core to how businesses get work done. From analyzing quarterly revenue to updating product inventory, spreadsheets are critical to helping companies gather and share data to inform quicker decisions—but what else can you do if they’re in the cloud? We’ve been focused on… Continue Reading

NIST’s New Quantum Method Generates Really Random Numbers

“Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have developed a method for generating numbers guaranteed to be random by quantum mechanics. Described in the April 12 issue of (link is external)Nature (link is external), the experimental technique surpasses all previous methods for ensuring the unpredictability of its random numbers and may enhance security… Continue Reading

Wharton – How Compassion Can Make You More Successful

Knowledge@Wharton – David DeSteno, Northeastern University psychology professor: “A couple years ago, Google’s HR department … [was] trying to figure out which teams were most successful. And their prediction going in was technical expertise [would be the key attribute for success]. But what they found is that the teams that actually had the most success… Continue Reading

New Survey Finds Significant Lack of Holocaust Knowledge in US

Majority of Americans Polled Believe Something Like the Holocaust Could Happen Again– “The survey found there are critical gaps both in awareness of basic facts as well as detailed knowledge of the Holocaust Julius Berman, President of the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany (Claims Conference), announces the release of a comprehensive national survey… Continue Reading

Nearly Two-Thirds of Young Americans Fearful About Future of Democracy in America

Harvard Institute of Politics – Youth Poll: “A new national poll of America’s 18-to 29-year-olds by Harvard’sInstitute of Politics (IOP), located at the Kennedy School of Government, finds that nearly two-thirds (64%) of young Americans have more fear than hope about the future of democracy in America. For the first time, the Harvard Public Opinion… Continue Reading