Accurate, Focused Research on Law, Technology and Knowledge Discovery Since 2002

158 Cherry Blossom Trees Will Be Cut Down in DC

Smithsonian: “This spring, Washington, D.C.’s beloved cherry blossom trees reached their earliest peak bloom in more than two decades, a consequence of an abnormally warm winter, consistent with climate change trends. The blossoms around the city’s Tidal Basin reached “peak bloom” on March 17—between one and three weeks earlier than in recent years, and a… Continue Reading

The Global E-Waste Monitor 2024

UNITAR: “The world is experiencing significant electronification, including a digital transformation, with technologies profoundly changing the way we live, work, learn, socialize, and do business. Many people own and use multiple electronic devices, and the increasing interconnectivity of urban and remote areas has led to a rise in the number of devices and objects linked… Continue Reading

Here’s the U.S. Government’s Antitrust Case Against Apple

404 Media: “Thursday [March 21, 2024], the Department of Justice and 16 states filed a massive, years-long antitrust case against Apple. Ahead of the DOJ’s press conference, 404 Media has obtained the full suit from PACER, the federal legal database. As a public service, we are providing the document here: We have not yet reviewed… Continue Reading

Who Has the Most Accurate Forecast for Your Location?

“Get a 5-day forecast and accuracy analysis for any US ZIP code or city. Forecast accuracy information [search by zip code or city/state]: ForecastAdvisor will show you the accuracy of the major weather forecasters, including Accuweather, AerisWeather, Foreca, the National Weather Service, Open Weathermap, The Weather Channel, Weather Underground, Wetter, World Weather Online, and Weather… Continue Reading

TikTokSpreads Misinformation 20 Percent of the Time and Is Banned in China

NewsGuard Reality Check: “The debate in Washington about what to do about TikTok is not about hypothetical harms. NewsGuard research over the years has shone a harsh light on TikTok as a misinformation superspreader. In one report, NewsGuard analysts mimicked how TikTok users interact with the video platform by analyzing 540 TikTok results based on… Continue Reading

Real-world CO2 emissions of cars and vans

Data is Plural. Real-world vehicle emissions. “On Monday, the European Commission published its first report analyzing the real-world CO2 emissions of cars and vans, based on fuel consumption monitoring devices that the EU now requires. The report uses data received from 600,000+ vehicles. That sample is available to download, along with metrics aggregated by manufacturer… Continue Reading

This simple machine turns glass bottles into sand

Fast Company. Glass recycling rates in the U.S. are abysmal. Finding non-traditional solutions—like Cynthia Andela’s glass crushing machines—could help. According to The Recycling Partnership, whole swaths of the U.S. don’t have glass bottle recycling, including regions of the Southeast and the Great Plains. A new report by the NGO states that the glass recycling rate… Continue Reading

Human trafficking

Data is Plural – Human trafficking. The Counter-Trafficking Data Collaborative’s Global Synthetic Dataset uses differential privacy techniques to represent “over 206,000 victims and survivors of trafficking identified across 190 countries and territories from 2002 to 2022.” The approach, developed in partnership with Microsoft Research, converts anonymized case records into “a new dataset in which records… Continue Reading

Aviation waypoints

Data is Plural: “Aviation waypoints. For his recent exploration of the FAA’s aviation maps, Beautiful Public Data’s Jon Keegan has turned the agency’s list of 67,000+ navigation waypoints into a downloadable dataset. “Often these waypoint names will reflect the culture, food or sports teams of the city they are near,” Keegan writes. “Off the coast… Continue Reading