“The number of open source (OS) online publishing platforms, i.e. production and hosting systems for scholarly books and journals, launched or in development, has proliferated in the last decade. Many of these publishing infrastructure initiatives are well-developed, stable, and supported by a small but vigorous distributed community of developers, but promising new ventures have also… Continue Reading
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Monthly Archives: August 2019
Google may just have solved podcasting’s discovery problem
FastCompany: “Looking for a specific podcast has always been a straightforward process: Plug in the title or the host’s name in an app store or search engine and you’re golden. But when you’re not sure what you’re looking for or just want to peruse your options based on a topic, you’ve had to rely on… Continue Reading
FCC Should Assess Making Off-School-Premises Access Eligible for Additional Federal Support
GAO Watch Blog – “These days, internet access is crucial for students both in and out of the classroom. “Underconnected” students—those with limited or no internet access at home—may have difficulty completing homework assignments. This puts them at risk of falling behind better-connected students. With back to school season on the horizon, today’s WatchBlog looks… Continue Reading
Climate Change Is Triggering More Heat Waves, Droughts, And Crop Yield Declines
“Land is already under growing human pressure and climate change is adding to these pressures. At the same time, keeping global warming to well below 2ºC can be achieved only by reducing greenhouse gas emissions from all sectors including land and food, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said in its latest report –… Continue Reading
When Robots Make Legal Mistakes
Morse, Susan C., When Robots Make Legal Mistakes (July 22, 2019). Oklahoma Law Review, Vol. 72, 2019. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3424110 “The questions presented by robots’ legal mistakes are examples of the legal process inquiry that asks when the law will accept decisions as final, even if they are mistaken. Legal decision-making robots include market… Continue Reading
IRS launches new tool to check your withholding
IRS Tax Estimator: “The IRS encourages everyone to use the Tax Withholding Estimator to perform a quick “paycheck checkup.” This is even more important following the recent changes to the tax law for 2018 and beyond. The Estimator helps you identify your tax withholding to make sure you have the right amount of tax withheld… Continue Reading
Lifehacker’s Complete Guide to Wifi
Life Hacker – “When your wifi is bad, you know it—oh, do you know it. And getting it working well again isn’t always as simple as unplugging and replugging your router, one of our favorite troubleshooting techniques for all things technological. You don’t have to memorize every setting in your router to set up a… Continue Reading
What all the stuff in email headers means—and how to sniff out spoofing
ars technica – Parsing email headers needs care and knowledge—but it requires no special tools: “I pretty frequently get requests for help from someone who has been impersonated—or whose child has been impersonated—via email. Even when you know how to “view headers” or “view source” in your email client, the spew of diagnostic wharrgarbl can be… Continue Reading
Google has a secret design library. Here are 35 of its best books
FastCompany: “For just over a year, Google’s hardware design team has been working inside a new, highly classified design studio. Only a small fraction of Google’s employees are allowed inside this beautiful, birchwood-framed space—a team of around 150, who are hard at work designing the next Pixel phones, Google Home assistants, and all sorts of… Continue Reading
Computer Science Could Learn A Lot From Library And Information Science
Forbes – Kalev Leetaru: “Computer science curriculums have long emphasized the power of data, encouraging its harvesting and hoarding, pioneering new ways of mining and manipulating users through it, reinforcing it as the path to riches in the modern economy and proselytizing the idea of data being able to solve all of society’s ills. In… Continue Reading
Want Safe, Bikeable Streets? Get Rid of Free Parking, as Amsterdam Did
StreetsBlogNYC – The city’s $8-an-hour fees, residential permits, and limits to car ownership made it the world’s cycling capital. Is New York brave enough to try it? – “Reminder: Amsterdam wasn’t Amsterdam until it was Amsterdam. The famed “bike capital” of the world was once as congested and car-choked as the worst Western cities. So how… Continue Reading
In Syria, War and Modernity Are No Match for the World’s Oldest Soap
Atlas Obscura – The artisans of Aleppo keep plying their ancient trade, one bar at a time: “The Syrian Civil War has been raging for eight years now. In that time it has decimated the ancient tradition of soap-making in Aleppo. Nearly the entire industry’s workforce was forced to flee when the fighting started—some to… Continue Reading
