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Daily Archives: March 4, 2024

Deciphering the FAA’s wildly complex aviation maps

Fast Company: “Among all of the visual information published by the U.S. government, there may be no product with a higher information density than the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) aviation maps. Intended for pilots, the FAA publishes free detailed maps of the entire U.S. airspace, and detailed maps of airports and their surroundings and updates them frequently. The density of the critical information layered on these maps is staggering, and it is a miracle that pilots can easily decipher these maps’ at a glance. But they can. My father was a private pilot, and I first saw these maps folded up with my Dad’s training materials when he was studying for his pilot’s license when I was a kid. I was overwhelmed with the ordered chaos of these maps, and they made an impression on me. There are several categories of aviation charts that the FAA makes available for download on their website. Let’s walk through some of the most used maps…”

Wyden’s Gets FTC To Protect Data Of 1.6 B People Tracked By Now-Bankrupt Data Broker

TechDirt: “There are two major reasons that the U.S. doesn’t pass an internet-era privacy law or regulate data brokers despite a parade of dangerous scandals. One, lobbied by a vast web of interconnected industries with unlimited budgets, Congress is too corrupt to do its job. Two, the U.S. government is disincentivized to do anything because it exploits… Continue Reading

Fetal personhood laws, explained

Vox: “The Alabama Supreme Court touched off a nationwide furor in February when it ruled that frozen, fertilized embryos legally count as “children.” The ruling upended the lives of patients undergoing IVF in Alabama and opened up a new front in the post-Dobbs battle over abortion rights. It also revived interest in — and concern… Continue Reading

Supreme Court Inadvertently Reveals Confounding Late Change in Trump Ballot Ruling

Slate: “The Supreme Court’s decision on Monday to keep Donald Trump on Colorado’s ballot was styled as a unanimous one without any dissents. But the metadata tells a different story. On the page, a separate opinion by the liberal justices is styled as a concurrence in the judgment, authored jointly by the trio. In the… Continue Reading

U.N. report: ‘Convincing’ information Hamas raped, tortured hostages

Follow up to Violence Against Women and International Law – Updated February 2024 – identifying and documenting pertinent sources for researchers on the October 7, 2023 terrorist attack and violence against women and girls, on March 4, 2024 the Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict issued a report.… Continue Reading

Facts Not Fakes: Tackling Disinformation, Strengthening Information Integrity

“More action needed to tackle disinformation and enhance transparency of online platforms: OECD. 04/03/2024 – As roughly half the world’s population prepares to vote in elections, a new OECD report offers the first baseline assessment of how OECD countries are upgrading their governance measures to support an environment where reliable information can thrive, prioritising freedom… Continue Reading

Mark the good stuff: Content provenance and the fight against disinformation

“BBC News’s Verify team is a dedicated group of 60 journalists who fact-check, verify video, counter disinformation, analyse data and – crucially – explain complex stories in the pursuit of truth. On Monday, March 4th, Verify published their first article using a new open media provenance technology called C2PA. The C2PA standard is a technology… Continue Reading

The European Extreme Events Climate Index

“The European Extreme Events Climate Index (E3CI) provides a general overview of weather-induced hazards by combining seven components: Extreme Max and Min Temperature, Drought, Extreme Precipitation, Hail, Fire, Extreme Wind. The European Extreme Events Climate Index (E3CI) is an ensemble of indices aimed at providing information about the areas affected by different types of weather-induced… Continue Reading

State of the Union

USA Facts: In Numbers – A nonpartisan, data-driven snapshot of the state of our union​. “Article II of the US Constitution mandates that the president periodically inform Congress about the “state of the union,” including budget reports and legislative proposals. It is also a chance for the president to review their achievements, with not just… Continue Reading