ProPublica: “A surge in identity theft during the pandemic underscores how easy it has become to obtain people’s private data. As hackers are all too happy to explain, many of them are cashing in on it.Consider some of the episodes last year in which large quantities of personal data were stolen: 300 million customer and… Continue Reading
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Monthly Archives: February 2022
For the Federal Response to COVID-19, Significant Improvements Are Needed in Leadership and Oversight
GAO Blog: “As of November, the U.S. Department of the Treasury (Treasury) spent nearly $38 billion of the almost $47 billion appropriated for Emergency Rental Assistance programs. This funding was provided to help renter households whose income was disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic with rent, utilities, and other housing expenses.The funds were disbursed as grants… Continue Reading
Divergent Global Views on Social Media, Free Speech, and Platform Regulation: Findings from the United Kingdom, South Korea, Mexico, and the United States
Wihbey, John and Chung, Myojung and Peacey, Mike and Morrow, Garrett and Tian, Yushu and Vitacco, Lauren and Rincon Reyes, Daniela and Clavijo, Melissa, Divergent Global Views on Social Media, Free Speech, and Platform Regulation: Findings from the United Kingdom, South Korea, Mexico, and the United States (January 3, 2022). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract= “Citizens… Continue Reading
Best Toilets of 2022 Five top performers from Consumer Reports’ tough tests, from American Standard, Kohler, and more
Consumer Reports: “If you haven’t updated your commode lately, you may be surprised to find that today’s toilets are, ahem, flush with improvements. New toilets use less water than ever, yet we’ve found in our tests that they tend to work better than previous generations of low-flow thrones. Recent improvements include optimized bowl shapes, stronger… Continue Reading
Announcing the Launch of the New DHS.gov
DHS Blog: “DHS is proud to announce the launch of our brand new DHS.gov. After months in the works, I’m happy to share that the Department’s flagship website has been significantly modernized and improved to provide the public and our workforce with a more intuitive, secure, and user-friendly experience. Excellence in user experience – and… Continue Reading
Omicron may not provide the mass immunity we’re hoping for
Quartz: “The omicron variant of covid-19, which has replaced delta as the most common strain, is still spreading around the world. While it’s much more contagious than previous covid-19 variants, omicron carries two possible silver linings: It appears to be less likely to cause severe illness and its spread raised some hopes that it could… Continue Reading
Tiny nanoplastics are floating in the air—and you’re breathing them in
Fast Company: “By some estimates, people have discarded 4,900 million tonnes of plastic have into the environment. Once in nature, that plastic starts to degrade, fragmenting into microplastics about the size of a sesame seed, which are inadvertently ingested by humans and animals through eating them in seafood and drinking them in water. Some reports… Continue Reading
Pete Recommends Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, January 29, 2022
Via LLRX – Pete Recommends Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, January 29, 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
UK Supreme Court has launched its first, free, online course for the public
Paul Sandles, Librarian and Departmental Records Officer: “The Supreme Court has launched its first, free, online course for the public. https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/inside-the-supreme-court. We have worked in partnership with Royal Holloway, University of London, to create the course. Our aim is to give people a behind the scenes look at the work of the Supreme Court and… Continue Reading
USPTO launches new Patent Public Search tool and webpage
“The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) today announced a new Patent Public Search tool that provides more convenient, remote, and robust full-text searching of all U.S. patents and published patent applications. Based on the advanced Patents End-to-End (PE2E) search tool USPTO examiners use to identify prior art, this free, cloud-based platform combines the capabilities of… Continue Reading
Is your job at the top of the Glassdoor best jobs 2022 list? If not, try one that is
TechRepublic: “Psychiatrists earn more ($252,385), and real estate agents and corporate recruiters have higher job satisfaction scores (4.4 out of 5). Despite that stiff competition, an IT job took the top spot in Glassdoor’s annual list of the top jobs in the U.S. Enterprise architects are number 1, followed by full-stack engineers, data scientists, devops… Continue Reading
Read the CIA’s Simple Sabotage Field Manual: A Timeless Guide to Subverting Any Organization with “Purposeful Stupidity” (1944)
Open Culture: “…Now declassified and freely available on the Homeland Security website, the manual the agency describes as “surprisingly relevant” was once distributed to OSS officers abroad to assist them in training “citizen-saboteurs” in occupied countries like Norway and France. Such people, writes Rebecca Onion at Slate, “might already be sabotaging materials, machinery, or operations of their… Continue Reading
