The New York Times & ProPublica: “Telegram has become a global sewer of criminal activity, disinformation, child sexual abuse material, terrorism and racist incitement, according to a four-month investigation by The New York Times that analyzed more than 3.2 million Telegram messages from over 16,000 channels. The company, which offers features that enable criminals, terrorists… Continue Reading
Accurate, Focused Research on Law, Technology and Knowledge Discovery Since 2002
Monthly Archives: September 2024
Billion-Dollar Bank Accused of Secretly Sending Customers’ Personal and Financial Information to Facebook, Google and Microsoft
The Daily Hodl: “The eighth-largest bank in the US by total assets is accused of secretly collecting personal and financial information from its customers and sharing the data with tech giants. A new class-action lawsuit alleges Capital One engaged in an “outrageous, illegal, and widespread practice of disclosing – without consent – the Nonpublic Personal… Continue Reading
YouTubers Are Almost Too Easy to Dupe
The Atlantic [unpaywalled]”Perhaps the most accurate cliché is that if a deal appears too good to be true, then it probably is. To wit: If a “private investor” of unknown origin approaches you through an intermediary, offering you $400,000 a month to make “four weekly videos” for a politically partisan website and YouTube page, you… Continue Reading
Compare State Gun Laws
Every Town – Pick any two states to see how they compare head-to-head on all 50 policies. You can also click on any state or policy for more detail. Continue Reading
Imports make up growing share of U.S. fresh fruit and vegetable supply
USDA: “Imports play a vital and increasingly important role in ensuring that fresh fruit and vegetables are available year-round in the United States. Since the 2008 completion of the transition to tariff- and quota-free trade among Mexico, Canada, and the United States under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), U.S. fresh fruit and vegetable… Continue Reading
The Big Map of Who Lived When
Open Culture – Shows Which Cultural Figures Walked the Earth at the Same Time: From 1200 to Present -“We could call the time in which we live the “Information Age.” Or we could describe it more vividly as the era of Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos, Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg, Oprah Winfrey and Martha… Continue Reading
Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, September 7, 2024
Via LLRX – Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, September 7, 2024 – Privacy and cybersecurity issues impact every aspect of our lives – home, work, travel, education, finance, 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
The information wars are about to get worse, Yuval Noah Harari argues
The Economist [unpaywalled]: “Let Truth and falsehood grapple,” argued John Milton in Areopagitica, a pamphlet published in 1644 defending the freedom of the press. Such freedom would, he admitted, allow incorrect or misleading works to be published, but bad ideas would spread anyway, even without printing—so better to allow everything to be published and let… Continue Reading
Tracking Boating Accidents in the United States
Tracking Boating Accidents in the United States. First published August 12, 2024. Data through. 2023. Introductory documentation The US Coast Guard (USCG) maintains the Boating Accident Report Database (BARD), which serves as a central, national database of recreational boating accidents. The data come from submissions of CG-3865, a form that boat operators must file to… Continue Reading
Sort out your life!
The Guardian – 100 tiny tricks to help with everything from digital overwhelm to lumpy sugar and unpaid bills – “However distant our schooldays, the start of the academic year makes everyone want to turn over a new leaf, to work harder and smarter; to be better. None of us has the whole answer but everyone… Continue Reading
How the Wayback Machine is trying to solve the web’s growing linkrot problem
The Verge: “We’ve been talking a lot about the future of the web on Decoder and across The Verge lately, and one big problem keeps coming up: huge chunks of the web keep going offline. In a lot of meaningful ways, large portions of the web are dying. Servers go offline, software upgrades break links… Continue Reading
How the quiet war against press freedom could come to America
Opinion – Washington Post – By A.G. Sulzberger/New York Times [free link]: Some foreign leaders have ruthlessly curtailed journalism. U.S. politicians could draw from their playbook. “After several years out of power, the former leader is returned to office on a populist platform. He blames the news media’s coverage of his previous government for costing… Continue Reading
