American Geophysical Union: “People with lower incomes are exposed to heat waves for longer periods of time compared to their higher income counterparts due to a combination of location and access to heat adaptations like air conditioning. This inequality is expected to rise as temperatures increase, according to new research. Lower income populations currently face… Continue Reading
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Monthly Archives: February 2022
There Is Nothing Normal about One Million People Dead from COVID
Scientific American: “Sometime in the next few weeks, the official death toll for the two-year COVID pandemic in the U.S. will reach one million. Despite being the wealthiest nation on the planet, the U.S. has continued to have the most COVID infections and deaths per country, by far, and it has the highest per capita… Continue Reading
Democracy Index 2021: the China challenge
Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) – “Democratisation suffered more reversals in 2021, with the percentage of people living in a democracy falling to well below 50% and authoritarian regimes gaining ground. This year’s report finds that democracy experienced its biggest annual decline since 2010, when the global financial crash led to major setbacks. The index score… Continue Reading
Deepfakes on Trial: a Call to Expand the Trial Judge’S Gatekeeping Role to Protect Legal Proceedings from Technological Fakery
Delfino, Rebecca, Deepfakes on Trial: a Call to Expand the Trial Judge’S Gatekeeping Role to Protect Legal Proceedings from Technological Fakery (February 10, 2022). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4032094 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4032094 “Picture this: You are arrested and accused of a serious crime, like carjacking, assault with a deadly weapon, or child abuse. The only evidence against… Continue Reading
The Changing Room Illusion
“The Changing Room Illusion is an example of “graduate change blindness,” a phenomenon in which observers are unable to notice changes to the world around them when those changes occur gradually. In virtually all prior cases, gradual change blindness is studied by changing individual objects (e.g., a chimney disappearing or a facial expression shifting). While… Continue Reading
Pete Recommends Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, February 12, 2022
Via LLRX – Pete Recommends Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, February 12, 2022 – Privacy and cybersecurity issues impact every aspect of our lives – home, work, travel, education, health and medical records – to name but a few. On a weekly basis Pete Weiss highlights articles and information that focus on the increasingly… Continue Reading
State of US Public Libraries – More popular and digital than ever
WordsRated: “This is a comprehensive analysis on the current state of public libraries in the US and the mapping of trends from 1992-2019. This report analyzes more than 12.5 million data points, from all 50 states, and the nearly 17,500 libraries across the country… Libraries are more popular than ever thanks to the strong shift… Continue Reading
European Publishers Council files EU Complaint against Google for Anti-Competitive Ad Tech practices
“The European Publishers Council has today filed an antitrust complaint against Google with the European Commission in a bid to break the ad tech stranglehold Google currently has over press publishers, and all other businesses in the ad tech ecosystem. Specifically, the EPC calls on the European Commission to hold Google accountable for its anticompetitive… Continue Reading
Why You Can’t See The Most Important Omicron Hot Spots In The U.S. On A Map
FiveThirtyEight: “When the delta variant swept through the Southern U.S. in summer 2021, the hot spots were easy enough to see. Huge swaths of red in Florida, Louisiana and Alabama swelled on COVID-19 tracker maps, like stop lights warning travelers to avoid the region. The culprit also seemed straightforward: Low vaccination rates in conservative communities.… Continue Reading
Researchers warn that social media may be ‘fundamentally at odds’ with science
TechCrunch: “A special set of editorials published in today’s issue of the journal Science argue that social media in its current form may well be fundamentally broken for the purposes of presenting and disseminating facts and reason. The algorithms are running the show now, they argue, and the systems priorities are unfortunately backwards. In an… Continue Reading
How to keep your remote work setup running smoothly with regular maintenance
Tech Republic: “The rise of remote work also means that more people than ever rely on IT systems for work in a home setting. If you work from home, your internet connection, Wi-Fi network, laptop and printer likely receive regular use. Unfortunately, however, your tech setup doesn’t necessarily maintain itself. While you may configure a… Continue Reading
ID.me gathers lots of data besides face scans
Washington Post – “…A private company that government agencies have used to verify the identities of millions of Americans through facial recognition used a variety of other data techniques to screen users, including collecting people’s phone location records and using software from the data-mining company Palantir to assess whether they have ties to “organized crime.”… Continue Reading
