“About three-quarters (74%) of public posts about COVID-19 linked to news organizations, while just 1% linked to health and science sites. The COVID-19 outbreak has driven record traffic to news sites as most Americans have sought out information about the virus and its implications for society. Many have turned to social media to follow the… Continue Reading
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Monthly Archives: June 2020
Coronavirus Tests the Limits of America’s Public Libraries
BloombergCityLab: “In April, a Johns Hopkins University report for governors on reopening drew such fierce backlash from librarians that the authors eventually revised their guidance. The report had initially deemed libraries a low-risk environment, meaning contact with other people is brief, “fairly distant” and with a few people. But “the study tainted the view of… Continue Reading
A lawsuit is threatening the Internet Archive but it’s not as dire as you may have heard
Vox: “The Internet Archive (also known as IA or Archive.org), home to the giant vault of internet and public domain history known as the Wayback Machine, is currently facing a crisis — one largely defined by misinformation. A group of publishing companies filed a scathing copyright lawsuit earlier this month over the IA’s controversial attempt… Continue Reading
Initial COVID-19 infection rate may be 80 times greater than originally reported
Penn State News – UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. – “Many epidemiologists believe that the initial COVID-19 infection rate was undercounted due to testing issues, asymptomatic and alternatively symptomatic individuals, and a failure to identify early cases. Now, a new study from Penn State estimates that the number of early COVID-19 cases in the U.S. may have… Continue Reading
Get A Comfortable Chair: Permanent Work From Home Is Coming
NPR – “Indefinite. Or even permanent. These are words companies are using about their employees working from home. It’s three months into a huge, unplanned social experiment that suddenly transported the white-collar workplace from cubicles and offices to kitchens and spare bedrooms. And many employers now say the benefits of remote work outweigh the drawbacks.… Continue Reading
What comes after Zoom?
Benedict Evans: “We had video calls in science fiction, and we had video conferencing in the 1990s, just as the web was taking off, as a very expensive and impractical tool for big companies. It was proposed as a use case for 3G, which didn’t happen at all, and with the growth of consumer broadband… Continue Reading
Indiana Supreme Court – It’s unconstitutional for cops to force phone unlocking
ars technica: “Indiana’s Supreme Court has ruled that the Fifth Amendment allows a woman accused of stalking to refuse to unlock her iPhone. The court held that the Fifth Amendment’s rule against self-incrimination protected Katelin Seo from giving the police access to potentially incriminating data on her phone. The courts are divided on how to… Continue Reading
What U.S. States Require Masks In Public?
Masks4All: “There aren’t any resources on the internet that display which U.S. States have mandatory mask laws and because masks are one of the most effective ways to stop COVID-19 spread, we decided to build this! Mandatory mask laws can mean many different things, sometimes it’s only on public transport, sometimes only in essential businesses,… Continue Reading
Wrongfully Accused by an Algorithm
ars technica: “Civil rights activists have filed an official complaint against the Detroit police, alleging the department arrested the wrong man based on a faulty and incorrect match provided by facial recognition software—the first known complaint of this kind. The American Civil Liberties Union filed the complaint (PDF) Wednesday on behalf of Robert Williams, a… Continue Reading
How to make sure Google automatically deletes your data on a regular basis
Vox: “…The company announced on Wednesday that auto-delete will be the default setting for user account activity settings. That said, this “default” setting only applies to new accounts or existing accounts that now turn on data retention after having it disabled. And the default auto-delete time still gives Google as much as three years of… Continue Reading
‘Subpar in Every Aspect’: Harvard Law Student Sues Over Online Classes
Law.com – “A Harvard Law student has filed a class action against the university, arguing that students should be charged a lower tuition for online classes on the grounds that they are inferior to in-person instruction. Harvard is the latest target in a wave of litigation focused on college and university tuition reimbursements amid the… Continue Reading
Coronavirus Researchers Are Dismantling Science’s Ivory Tower One Study at a Time
Wired – “…We decided to formally launch our effort with a weekend hackathon. Other groups had organized similar events to develop diagnostic tests and help with the shortage of medical equipment, so why not do the same for research? From the beginning, we knew we’d have to shake up the usual way of doing things.… Continue Reading
