EFF – Karen Gullo – “When is a government rule not a rule? Making that question difficult, when it should be simple, seems to be the government’s leading strategy in a hearing this week in Twitter Inc.’s lawsuit challenging the government’s squelching of its transparency report. Twitter wants to provide a closer look at how… Continue Reading
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Monthly Archives: May 2015
Librarians Versus the NSA
Via The Nation – Librarians Versus the NSA – Your local library is on the front lines against government surveillance, Zoë Carpenter “Alison Macrina had bad news for the 30 or so librarians in the darkened auditorium on a recent Friday. “Your password is bad,” she informed them. “I’m really sorry. Everything you’ve learned about… Continue Reading
HeinOnline Oral History of Law Librarianship
Via Michel-Adrien: ” U.S. vendor HeinOnline has created a series of online interviews entitled An Oral History of Law Librarianship.The interviews are part of the HeinOnline library Spinelli’s Law Library Reference Shelf and are also viewable on the HeinOnline YouTube channel. The videos contain interviews of active and retired law librarians and others related to… Continue Reading
Energy Report – Home Idle Load
Natural Resources Defense Council – Devices Wasting Huge Amounts of Electricity When Not in Active Use “Always-on” energy use by inactive appliances, electronics and miscellaneous electrical devices translates to $19 billion a year — about $165 per U.S. household on average. The average always-on load uses the same amount of electricity as brewing 234 cups… Continue Reading
Information Processing of Foreign Exchange News
Feuerriegel, Stefan and Wolff, Georg and Neumann, Dirk, Information Processing of Foreign Exchange News: Extending the Overshooting Model to Include Qualitative Information from News Sentiment (May 6, 2015). Available for download at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2603435 “In a globalized world, the volume of international trade is based on both import and export prices, thereby making a country’s… Continue Reading
DOJ Summary of Annual FOIA Reports – 2014
DOJ Summary of Annual FOIA Reports For Fiscal Year 2014 – “In FY 2014, the federal government overall received 714,231 FOIA requests, continuing a four year trend of surpassing the record high number of requests received during a fiscal year. The additional 9,837 requests received is a 1.4% increase from the previous record high number… Continue Reading
NASA – Cloudy Earth
NASA Earth Observatory – “Decades of satellite observations and astronaut photographs show that clouds dominate space-based views of Earth. One study based on nearly a decade of satellite data estimated that about 67 percent of Earth’s surface is typically covered by clouds. This is especially the case over the oceans, where other research shows less… Continue Reading
Website About Endangered Species and the Efforts to Save Them
“Over the last 18 years, Bagheera has been visited by millions of people who have requested tens of millions of pages of information on endangered species. Bagheera was created by Endangered Species Journalist Craig Kasnoff in 1996 as part of Microsoft’s Schoolhouse Project. It is the first of many endangered species websites created by Craig to… Continue Reading
Antitrust: EU Commission launches e-commerce sector inquiry
News release: “The European Commission has today launched an antitrust competition inquiry into the e-commerce sector in the European Union. The inquiry, as announced by Commissioner Vestager in March, will allow the Commission to identify possible competition concerns affecting European e-commerce markets. It complements actions launched within the framework of the Digital Single Market Strategy… Continue Reading
Report – Millennial Childbearing and the Recession
Urban Institute – Millennial Childbearing and the Recession. Nan Marie Astone; Steven Martin; H. Elizabeth Peters. April 28, 2015 “This brief is part of an Urban Institute study of the Millennial generation, those born between 1980 and 1995, exploring its diversity, demographics, and policy implications. Between 2007 and 2012, birth rates among twenty-something women declined… Continue Reading
Ad Injection at Scale: Assessing Deceptive Advertisement Modifications
Google Research Paper – “Today, web injection manifests in many forms, but fundamentally occurs when malicious and unwanted actors tamper directly with browser sessions for their own profit. In this work we illuminate the scope and negative impact of one of these forms, ad injection , in which users have ads imposed on them in… Continue Reading
Federal Appeals Court Strikes Down NSA Bulk Record Collection Program
EPIC – “The Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled today that the NSA’s telephone record collection program exceeds legal authority. The government claimed that it could collect all records under the Section 215 “relevance” standard. But the court rejected that argument and held that “such an expansive concept of ‘relevance’ is unprecedented and unwarranted.” The… Continue Reading
