“The richest people on earth became $1 trillion richer in 2017, more than four times last year’s gain, as stock markets shrugged off economic, social and political divisions to reach record highs. The 23 percent increase on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, a daily ranking of the world’s 500 richest people, compares with an almost 20… Continue Reading
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Monthly Archives: December 2017
Update on the Twitter Archive at the Library of Congress
“In 2010, the Library of Congress announced an exciting and groundbreaking acquisition—a gift from Twitter of the entire archive of public tweet text beginning with the first tweets of 2006 through 2010, and continuing with all public tweet text going forward. The Library took this step for the same reason it collects other materials –… Continue Reading
What can machine learning do? Workforce implications
What can machine learning do? Workforce implications. Erik Brynjolfsson and Tom Mitchell. Science 22 Dec 2017: Vol. 358, Issue 6370, pp. 1530-1534 DOI: 10.1126/science.aap8062 “Digital computers have transformed work in almost every sector of the economy over the past several decades. We are now at the beginning of an even larger and more rapid transformation… Continue Reading
Notifications on Committee Action on Legislation
Via In Custodia Legis – this guide by Adrienne Keys, specialist in legislative information systems management within the Congressional Research Service (CRS) of the Library of Congress. “Did you know that by using Congress.gov, you can receive notifications of committee action on legislation? Use the Legislation Advanced Search form to create a saved search and set up email… Continue Reading
Latest version of Firefox delays requests to tracking domains
Posting by developer Honza Bamba: “Firefox Quantum – version 57 – introduced number of changes to the network requests scheduler. One of them is using data of the Tracking Protection database to delay load of scripts from tracking domains when possible during the time a page is actively loading and rendering – I call it… Continue Reading
Paper – Did a severe drought in 1893 trigger the rise of the Mafia
Weak States: Causes and Consequences of the Sicilian Mafia. Daron Acemoglu, Giuseppe De Feo, and Giacomo De Luca. NBER Working Paper No. 24115. December 2017. “We document that the spread of the Mafia in Sicily at the end of the 19th century was in part shaped by the rise of socialist Peasant Fasci organizations. In… Continue Reading
Is it legal for a business in US to refuse cash as a form of payment?
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System: Is it legal for a business in the United States to refuse cash as a form of payment? [Useful information – I generally pay with cash and have increasingly encountered the response – we take credit/debit cards or you can use an app] “Section 31 U.S.C. 5103,… Continue Reading
Paper – A Logic for Statutes
Lawsky, Sarah B., A Logic for Statutes (December 14, 2017). Florida Tax Review, Forthcoming; Northwestern Public Law Research Paper No. 17-28. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3088206 “Case-based reasoning is, without question, a puzzle. When students are taught to “think like lawyers” in their first year of law school, they are taught case-based common-law reasoning. Books on… Continue Reading
Paper – Scholars on Twitter: who and how many are they?
Scholars on Twitter: who and how many are they? Rodrigo Costas, Jeroen van Honk, Thomas Franssen. (Submitted on 15 Dec 2017) “In this paper we present a novel methodology for identifying scholars with a Twitter account. By combining bibliometric data from Web of Science and Twitter users identified by Altmetric.com we have obtained the largest… Continue Reading
NASA – High Definition Earth-Viewing System
“The High Definition Earth Viewing (HDEV) experiment aboard the ISS was activated April 30, 2014. It is mounted on the External Payload Facility of the European Space Agency’s Columbus module. This experiment includes several commercial HD video cameras aimed at the Earth which are enclosed in a pressurized and temperature controlled housing. While the experiment… Continue Reading
New on LLRX – Legislation Alert: Worrisome Changes to Government Publications Are Possible
Via LLRX – Legislation Alert: Worrisome Changes to Government Publications Are Possible Peggy Roebuck Jarrett writes about an issue that is significant to law librarians, federal documents librarians, and to the public. The subject is a draft House bill that proposes “to amend title 44, United States Code, to reform the organization, authorities, and programs… Continue Reading
Google Maps Go are alternative to Google Maps
ghacks.net: “Google unveiled Android Go some time ago. Android Go is an optimized version of Android designed specifically for low-end devices and infrastructure….Google launched several Go-optimized versions of its services for Android Go. Google Maps Go is one of the recent ones that it launched. While listed on Google Play, it is not available for… Continue Reading
