“What the numbers say: Between 1970 and 2021, climate-related disasters resulted in economic losses of around $4.3T, with tropical cyclones responsible for the highest portion of losses at 38%, closely followed by floods which accounted for 32%. Relevance: According to professional services firm Aon’s 2023 Weather, Climate, and Catastrophe Insight, economic losses from hurricanes increased… Continue Reading
Accurate, Focused Research on Law, Technology and Knowledge Discovery Since 2002
Category Archives: Economy
Data scientists predict stock returns with AI and online news
Cornell Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science – “For years, the financial press has helped inform investors of all stripes. Cornell researchers have discovered it can also inform the algorithm behind a new financial predicting model. In their paper, “News-Based Sparse Machine Learning Models for Adaptive Asset Pricing,” published in Data Science… Continue Reading
Who Employs Your Doctor? Increasingly, a Private Equity Firm.
The New York Times: “A new study finds that private equity firms own more than half of all specialists in certain U.S. markets. In recent years, private equity firms have been gobbling up physician practices to form powerful medical groups across the country, according to a new report released Monday. In more than a quarter… Continue Reading
Corporate Climate Responsibility Monitor 2023
“The Corporate Climate Responsibility Monitor evaluates the transparency and integrity of companies’ climate pledges. Companies around the world are increasingly alert to the climate emergency. They face calls from a growing range of stakeholders to take responsibility for the impact of their activities. Most large companies now have public climate strategies and targets, many of… Continue Reading
How fast are the seas rising?
Yale Climate Connections: “The modern era of human-caused climate change — the Anthropocene — has also been called the Pyrocene because we’ve entered an age of fire, characterized by large wildfires of increasing size, intensity, and duration. But we propose another term for the modern era: the Aquacene, a time of rapidly increasing flooding from… Continue Reading
Report – Meta and Tax Prep Companies “Recklessly” Shared Taxpayers’ Data
Elizabeth Warren: “Today I released a new 54-page report revealing that Big Tax Prep companies have recklessly shared personal and financial data of millions of taxpayers with Big Tech for years. Regulators need to fully investigate and prosecute those who violated the law… Via The MarkUp: “Meta and major tax preparation companies inappropriately shared millions… Continue Reading
Report: U.S. is 32nd Worldwide on Broadband Affordability
Broadband Genie via telecompetitor: “The United States ranks thirty-second in the world on internet affordability, according to new research from Broadband Genie, a provider of data about broadband services. Broadband affordability is defined by the percentage of a country’s average salary that would need to be spent to cover the average cost of internet connectivity.… Continue Reading
How printers keep us hooked on expensive ink
Public Interest Research Group – Lucas Gutterman: “Manufacturers lock us into buying ink cartridges at exorbitant prices. There are simple steps to end the ink trap… You might question if home printers are relevant, but 47% of American households still have one and our country spends more than $21 billion on ink cartridges per year.*… Continue Reading
“Shadow libraries” at heart of mounting copyright lawsuits against OpenAI
Quartz: “…Shadow libraries are online databases that provide access to millions of books and articles that are out of print, hard to obtain, and paywalled. Many of these databases, which began appearing online around 2008, originated in Russia, which has a long tradition of sharing forbidden books, according to the magazine Reason. Soon enough, these… Continue Reading
America’s first law regulating AI bias in hiring takes effect this week
Quartz: “Artificial intelligence isn’t simply changing how we do our jobs: It’s also deciding whether we get jobs at all. Companies are increasingly incorporating algorithmic tools into their hiring processes, from software that reads our resumes to AI bots that score our first interviews. Now in New York City, new legislation is being used to determine… Continue Reading
Air Pollution in World: Real-time Air Quality Index Visual Map
“In July 2023, real-time Air Quality information is available for than 50,000 stations in 2000 major cities from 132 countries, thanks to the huge effort from the world EPAs (Environmental Protection Agencies). There are currently more than 50,000 known air quality monitoring stations in the world. In order to keep a high level on consistency,… Continue Reading
Nine British Banks Sign Up to New AI Tool for Tackling Scams
Bloomberg [alt free link]: “Mastercard Inc. is selling a new artificial intelligence-powered tool that helps banks more effectively spot if their customers are trying to send money to fraudsters. Nine of the UK’s biggest banks, including Lloyds Banking Group Plc, Natwest Group Plc and Bank of Scotland Plc, have signed up to use the Consumer… Continue Reading
