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Daily Archives: October 21, 2020

A Handful of Asteroid Could Help Decipher Our Entire Existence.

The AtlanticA NASA mission to a distant space rock could reveal clues about the early solar system. “For most of human history, the only way for scientists to get their hands on an asteroid was to wait for small chunks of one to fall through Earth’s atmosphere and smash into the ground. Incoming rocks can break apart and even vaporize during their fiery descent, so the world’s inventory of meteorites—the names given to asteroids once they’ve made it through the atmosphere—consists of only the hardiest samples…

Scientists believe that the solar system’s more ancient asteroids might have been responsible for delivering water to early Earth. Remarkably, the origin of our oceans, unmatched in the solar system, remains a mystery, one that bits of Bennu could help solve. “We are really curious to see if the water that is bound up in Bennu’s hydrated minerals has signatures that are similar to water on Earth,” Daniella DellaGiustina, an OSIRIS-REx scientist who works at the University of Arizona’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, told me. Researchers are also keen to see whether the organic materials they snag from Bennu resemble the ancient precursors that led to life on Earth…”

VPN Security: How VPNs Work and How to Buy the Best One

eSecurity Planet – “With more and more employees working remotely, either from home or on the go, enterprises need a way to secure their communications with the corporate network. One solution is a virtual private network (VPN), which enables employees to securely send data between computers across a shared or public network. VPNs were developed… Continue Reading

How does Google’s monopoly hurt you? Try these searches.

Washington Post [paywall – Seattle Times no paywall] “Let’s Google together. Open a Web browser and search for T-shirts. I’ll wait. Is the first thing you see a search result? I’m not talking about the stuff labeled Ads or Maps. On my screen, the actual result is not in the first, second, third, fourth, fifth,… Continue Reading

A Brief Guide to Online Teaching

Ryznar, Margaret, A Brief Guide to Online Teaching (August 22, 2020). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3679117 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3679117 “This brief guide to online teaching offers assistance in selecting between the synchronous and asynchronous online format, before proceeding to a brief step-by-step guide on the design elements of both asynchronous and synchronous online courses. The focus remains… Continue Reading

Taking Back Our Privacy

The New Yorker – Moxie Marlinspike, the founder of the end-to-end encrypted messaging service Signal, is “trying to bring normality to the Internet. “…Marlinspike is the C.E.O. of Signal, the end-to-end encrypted messaging service, which he launched in 2014; he is also a cryptographer, a hacker, a shipwright, and a licensed mariner…Marlinspike believes that encrypted-communication… Continue Reading

COVID-19: Government Resources for Real-Time Economic Indicators

CRS Insight via LC – COVID-19: Government Resources for Real-Time Economic Indicators, October 21, 2020: “This CRS Insight presents select real-time economic indicators that attempt to measure the impact of the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic on the U.S. economy. Created by select federal government agencies, these new or unique indicators attempt to measure the… Continue Reading

A Reset for Library E-books

Publishers Weekly – In the wake of the pandemic, can publishers and libraries finally hash out their differences? “…But in mid-March, when the reality of the pandemic became apparent, everything changed. As libraries closed their doors and began shifting their print budgets to digital, dozens of publishers began slashing library e-book and digital audio prices and… Continue Reading

Copyright in Code: Supreme Court Hears Landmark Software Case in Google v. Oracle

CRS Legal Sidebar via LC – Copyright in Code: Supreme Court Hears Landmark Software Case in Google v. Oracle, October 21, 2020: “In what observers have hailed as the “copyright case of the century,” an eight-member Supreme Court heard arguments on October 7, 2020 ,in Google LLC v. Oracle America Inc., a long-running intellectual-property dispute… Continue Reading

USPS IG Report – Operational Changes to Mail Delivery

“This report responds to an August 7, 2020, congressional request regarding concerns that Postmaster General Louis DeJoy’s modifications to U.S. Postal Service staffing and policies had an adverse effect on Postal Service operations, leading to slower and less reliable mail delivery. This report also responds to a number of recent similar congressional requests. We are… Continue Reading