The Intercept: “Most of the data collected by urban planners is messy, complex, and difficult to represent. It looks nothing like the smooth graphs and clean charts of city life in urban simulator games like “SimCity.” A new initiative from Sidewalk Labs, the city-building subsidiary of Google’s parent company Alphabet, has set out to change… Continue Reading
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Category Archives: E-Records
Best VPN services of 2019: Reviews and buying advice
PCWorld: “Choosing the right virtual private network (VPN) service is no simple task. A VPN should keep your internet usage private and secure, but not every service handles your data in the same way. Just look at the critiques of notable computer security experts and online pundits to understand the challenge. (Want to know more… Continue Reading
Report – world has become more “permissionless” because of the diminished power of traditional gatekeepers
Via Axios – PERMISSIONLESS: What It Means, How It Happened, Will it Last: “While the Internet revolution enabled “permissionless” business models in finance, entertainment & politics, such unregulated disruptors are under growing attack. From the tech sector to the White House, many object to the divisions these new actors exacerbate or the externalities they often… Continue Reading
The Federal Government Offers a Case Study in Bad Email Tracking
EFF: “The U.S. government sends a lot of emails. Like any large, modern organization, it wants to “optimize” for “user engagement” using “analytics” and “big data.” In practice, that means tracking the people it communicates with—secretly, thoroughly, and often, insecurely. Granicus is a third-party contractor that builds communication tools to help governments engage constituents online.… Continue Reading
Why the PDF Is Secretly the World’s Most Important File Format
Motherboard – The story of the PDF, the file format that’s become one of the internet’s defining information tools. It’ll be with us after we’re long gone. “The Portable Document Format, or PDF, is everywhere. But it’s still a format that causes headaches for the average person. Just take former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort,… Continue Reading
Playing with data and its consequences
First Monday – Volume 24, Number 1 – 7 January 2019 > Gutiérrez. https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v24i1.9554 “The fundamental paradigm shift brought about by datafication alters how people participate as citizens on a daily basis. “Big data” has come to constitute a new terrain of engagement, which brings organized collective action, communicative practices and data infrastructure into a… Continue Reading
Our Cellphones Aren’t Safe
Opinion | Our Cellphones Aren’t Safe – The New York Times: “Security flaws threaten our privacy and bank accounts. So why aren’t we fixing them? America’s cellular network is as vital to society as the highway system and power grids. Vulnerabilities in the mobile phone infrastructure threaten not only personal privacy and security, but also… Continue Reading
How to Delete Online Accounts You No Longer Need
Consumer Reports – Having too many digital accounts raises your risk of data being misused or stolen. Here’s how to clean house. By Thomas Germain. December 27, 2018 [h/t Pete Weiss] “Deleting online accounts is one of the best ways to protect your data security and privacy. The less data you have stored on corporate databases… Continue Reading
NYT historical news clippings and photos via Google Cloud
Google Cloud: “For over 100 years, The New York Times has stored its historical news clippings and photographs in an underground archive lovingly named the “morgue.” Most of us keep stacks of pictures in our attic or basement. And media organizations are no different. The New York Times has archived approximately five to seven million… Continue Reading
Cellphones, Law Enforcement, and the Right to Privacy
Brennan Center for Social Justice: How the Government Is Collecting and Using Your Location Data “Cell phones are ubiquitous. As of 2017, there were more cell phones than people in the United States. Nearly 70 percent of those were smartphones, with 94 percent of millennials carrying a smart device. Cell phones go nearly everywhere, and… 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
Almost every part of Trump’s life is under investigation
WASHINGTON (AP) — “Investigations now entangle Donald Trump’s White House, campaign, transition, inauguration, charity and business. For Trump, the political, the personal and the deeply personal are all under examination. Less than two years into Trump’s presidency, his business associates, political advisers and family members are being probed, along with the practices of his late… Continue Reading
