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Daily Archives: September 6, 2021

Bosses turn to ‘tattleware’ to keep tabs on employees working from home

The Guardian: “…Remote surveillance software like Sneek, also known as “tattleware” or “bossware”, represented something of a niche market pre-Covid. But that all changed in March 2020, as employers scrambled to pull together work-from-home policies out of thin air. In April last year, Google queries for “remote monitoring” were up 212% year-on-year; by April this year, they’d continued to surge by another 243%. One of the major players in the industry, ActivTrak, reports that during March 2020 alone, the firm scaled up from 50 client companies to 800. Over the course of the pandemic, the company has maintained that growth, today boasting 9,000 customers – or, as it claims, more than 250,000 individual users. Time Doctor, Teramind, and Hubstaff – which, together with ActivTrak, make up the bulk of the market – have all seen similar growth from prospective customers…”

UN Environment Program: “…One-third of all food produced in the world – approximately 1.3 billion tonnes – is lost or wasted every year. Globally, if food waste could be represented as its own country, it would be the third largest greenhouse gas emitter, behind China and the United States. The resources needed to produce the food… Continue Reading

Automated hiring software is mistakenly rejecting millions of viable job candidates

The Verge: “Automated resume-scanning software is contributing to a “broken” hiring system in the US, says a new report from Harvard Business School. Such software is used by employers to filter job applicants, but is mistakenly rejecting millions of viable candidates, say the study’s authors. It’s contributing to the problem of “hidden workers” — individuals… Continue Reading

This is the perfect ransomware victim, according to cybercriminals

ZDNet: “On Monday, KELA published a report on listings made by ransomware operators in the underground, including access requests — the way to gain an initial foothold into a target system — revealing that many want to buy a way into US companies with a minimum revenue of over $100 million. Initial access is now… Continue Reading

AI Policy and Research Clinic

“The Berkman Klein Center, in collaboration with the City of Helsinki’s Education Division and the AI-transparency company Saidot, hosted a virtual AI Policy Research Clinic to study the ethical governance of artificial intelligence-enhanced technologies deployed to support learning, student wellbeing, and retention in Helsinki’s vocational schools. Part of a Global Network of Internet & Society… Continue Reading

The GDELT Project

“A Global Database of Society – Supported by Google Jigsaw, the GDELT Project monitors the world’s broadcast, print, and web news from nearly every corner of every country in over 100 languages and identifies the people, locations, organizations, themes, sources, emotions, counts, quotes, images and events driving our global society every second of every day,… Continue Reading

Controlled Digital Lending: Unlocking the Library’s Full Potential

Library Futures – “For many, libraries are a more trusted source of information than government, news, and social media. As physical spaces closed in response to the pandemic and communities turned more to digital resources to access knowledge, libraries moved to meet the challenge with new digital initiatives. Through a process called “controlled digital lending”… Continue Reading

Visualizing Daily Activities

“Flowing Data,  Cycle of Many, a 24-hour snapshot for a day in the life of Americans: “This is a 24-hour snapshot for a day in the life of Americans. Each ring represents an activity with a color. More dots means a greater percentage of people doing the respective activity during a certain time of day…” Continue Reading

What an enormous global study can tell us about feeling better during the pandemic

Vox: “…Recently, hundreds of researchers in 87 countries published the results of the largest cognitive reappraisal study to date in Nature Human Behavior. They were asking a simple question: Could they make people feel better about the pandemic, if only for one moment in time, by teaching reappraisals? The study, which amassed data on more… Continue Reading