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Monthly Archives: December 2018

Statistics of the Year 2018: Winners announced

Royal Statistical Society: “This year’s Statistics of the Year announcement has a distinctly environmental theme as statistics relating to plastic waste and the use of solar energy emerged as the winners of this year’s International and UK categories respectively. The commended entries cover a plethora of other issues, from the reduction in global ‘absolute poverty’… Continue Reading

US Treasury sanctions Russians for hacking and election meddling

engadget: “The US government isn’t done taking action against Russians accused of hacking and interference campaigns. The Treasury Department has leveled sanctions against 16 current and former GRU intelligence officers (some of whom were targeted in earlier indictments) for their involvement in multiple campaigns against the US, including the Democratic National Committee hacks, World Anti-Doping… Continue Reading

As Facebook Raised a Privacy Wall, It Carved an Opening for Tech Giants

The New York Times: “For years, Facebook gave some of the world’s largest technology companies more intrusive access to users’ personal data than it has disclosed, effectively exempting those business partners from its usual privacy rules, according to internal records and interviews. The special arrangements are detailed in hundreds of pages of Facebook documents obtained… Continue Reading

The Fresno Bee and the War on Local News

GQ: “Local newspapers like The Fresno Bee have long been an endangered institution in America, and that was before California Rep. Devin Nunes began waging a public campaign against his hometown paper. Zach Baron spent time with the reporters fighting to keep news alive in an age when the forces they cover are working equally… Continue Reading

Researchers try to cope without HHS public medical guideline database five months after its takedown

Sunlight Foundation: “When the Agency for Healthcare Quality and Research (AHRQ) shut down its National Guideline Clearinghouse (NGC) in July, medical professionals who relied on the database, hosted at guideline.gov, reacted with alarm. For nearly 20 years, AHRQ’s repository of medical guidelines had served as the gold standard for clinicians, helping guide day to day… Continue Reading

Bookstore’s viral tweet calls out shoppers who buy on Amazon

Business Insider: The Fountain Bookstore in Richmond, Virginia, called out shoppers for “showrooming” in a viral tweet. It said that customers have been coming in and taking pictures of books, then buying them on Amazon. It said some are even bragging about doing it. Showrooming is still a problem for small, independent retailers without an… Continue Reading

Google isn’t the company that we should have handed the Web over to

ars technica: “With Microsoft’s decision to end development of its own Web rendering engine and switch to Chromium, control over the Web has functionally been ceded to Google. That’s a worrying turn of events, given the company’s past behavior. Chrome itself has about 72 percent of the desktop-browser market share. Edge has about 4 percent.… Continue Reading

Johnson & Johnson knew for decades that asbestos lurked in its Baby Powder

Reuters Investigates – Powder Keg – “Facing thousands of lawsuits alleging that its talc caused cancer, J&J insists on the safety and purity of its iconic product. But internal documents examined by Reuters show that the company’s powder was sometimes tainted with carcinogenic asbestos and that J&J kept that information from regulators and the public….J&J… Continue Reading