Semafor: “The devastating wildfires that are sweeping Los Angeles may accelerate the flight of home insurance companies from California in spite of recent regulatory changes aimed at retaining them, the state’s previous top insurance official told Semafor. At least two major fires are still raging largely uncontained, aided by ongoing high winds, and 24 people… Continue Reading
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Author Archives: Sabrina I. Pacifici
U.S. Employee Engagement Sinks to 10-Year Low
Gallup: “Employee engagement in the U.S. fell to its lowest level in a decade in 2024, with only 31% of employees engaged. This matches the figure last seen in 2014. The percentage of actively disengaged employees, at 17%, also reflects 2014 levels. The percentage of engaged employees has declined by two percentage points since 2023,… Continue Reading
Special Counsel Report Says Trump Would Have Been Convicted in Election Case
The New York Times – gift article “…The Justice Department delivered the 137-page volume [link provided by DOJ – https://www.justice.gov/storage/Report-of-Special-Counsel-Smith-Volume-1-January-2025.pdf]— representing half of Mr. Smith’s overall final report, with the volume about Mr. Trump’s other federal case, accusing him of mishandling classified documents, still confidential — to Congress just after midnight on Tuesday. The former… Continue Reading
California wildfires map
The Los Angeles Times has this amazing interactive map, based on real-time open data provided by CalFire and the Geospatial Multi-Agency Coordination. See also Analysing satellite imagery of the Jan 2025 Southern California wildfires: “3.9 micron data from the GOES-16 East and GOES-18 West satellites on the January 2025 Southern California fires. We download the… Continue Reading
Apple auto-opts everyone into having their photos analyzed by AI for landmarks
The Register: “Apple last year deployed a mechanism for identifying landmarks and places of interest in images stored in the Photos application on its customers iOS and macOS devices and enabled it by default, seemingly without explicit consent. Apple customers have only just begun to notice. The feature, known as Enhanced Visual Search, was called… Continue Reading
Open Port Chronicle: What Port 80 Revealed About The Internet
“At RedHunt Labs, we conduct extensive internet-wide studies as part of Project Resonance to stay ahead of the evolving cyberspace and enhance our Attack Surface Management (ASM) platform. This blog highlights our recent research, where we analyzed billions of IP addresses to check for port 80 open, uncovering fascinating insights. The internet is massive –… Continue Reading
AI Is Like Tinkerbell: It Only Works If We Believe in It Keep clapping. Louder
Futurism – “There’s no limit to the promise of artificial intelligence. Or at least, there’s no limit to the promises that the powerful make about AI. We’re told by tech companies and their investors that AI has the capacity to transform everything, making us more productive workers and more efficient learners — before eventually making… Continue Reading
Inside the Black Box of Predictive Travel Surveillance
Wired – “Behind the scenes, companies and governments are feeding a trove of data about international travelers into opaque AI tools that aim to predict who’s safe—and who’s a threat… In Europe, at least four technology companies—Idemia, SITA, Travizory, and WCC—offer governments around the world software that uses algorithms on traveler data to profile passengers.… Continue Reading
Strict Scrutiny
“A podcast about the United States Supreme Court and the legal culture that surrounds it. Hosted by three badass constitutional law professors– Leah Litman, Kate Shaw, and Melissa Murray– Strict Scrutiny provides in-depth, accessible, and irreverent analysis of the Supreme Court and its cases, culture, and personalities. Each week, Leah, Kate, and Melissa break down… Continue Reading
Geospatial search for OpenStreetMap
Spot allows you to search for relations between entities in OpenStreetMap. Spot can analyse your prompt for entities, their relations and location and display the matching results on a map. Continue Reading
Search the BIRLS Database
“Department of Veterans Affairs (the VA). It provides an index to basic biographical information on more than 18 million deceased American veterans who received some sort of veterans benefits in their lifetime, including health care, disability or life insurance policies, educational benefits (the GI Bill), mortgage assistance (VA loans), and more. The BIRLS database includes… Continue Reading
ABA Free Legal Answers surpasses 400k inquiries; nearly 100,000 pro bono hours served
ABA: “Free Legal Answers, the virtual legal advice clinic sponsored by the American Bar Association, hit a major milestone, crossing the 400,000-mark in the total number of questions handled since the program’s inception in 2016. The program’s more than 15,000 attorneys registered nationally to volunteer performed over 16,500 hours of pro bono service in 2024,… Continue Reading
