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Monthly Archives: September 2013

How Economic Insecurity in Children Changed Over the Course of the Great Recession

How Economic Insecurity in Children Changed Over the Course of the Great Recession: Fact Sheet by Lisa Dubay and Elena Zarabozo “Given the high stakes for children living in economically insecure families, it is important to document how many children are living in such circumstances, how economic insecurity has changed over the course of the… Continue Reading

Interim Report on DOJ Use and Support of Unmanned Aircraft Systems

DOJ OIG –  Interim Report on the Department of Justice’s Use and Support of Unmanned Aircraft Systems – Report 13-37, September 2013. “While both the FBI and ATF have developed procedures guiding how to receive approval to operate UAS, officials with both components told us they did not believe that there was a need to… Continue Reading

New on LLRX – The Humanities and Technology Camp (THATCamp): An “unconference” experience

Via LLRX.com – The Humanities and Technology Camp (THATCamp): An “unconference” experience LLRX readers might enjoy “Archivist and Librarian Celia Caust-Ellenbogen writes: “if you read LLRX, it is probably because you are interested in various facets of a massive constellation of issues surrounding technology, legal research, jurisprudence, library and information science, and related subjects. You… Continue Reading

Microsoft’s Law Enforcement Requests Report for first six months of 2013

What does the data show? “Microsoft (including Skype) received 37,196 requests from law enforcement agencies potentially impacting 66,539 accounts in the first six months of this year. This compares to 75,378 requests and 137,424 potential accounts in the whole of 2012. Approximately 77 percent of requests resulted in the disclosure of “non-content data”. No data… Continue Reading

Explaining Trends in SNAP Enrollment

Explaining Trends in SNAP Enrollment – Peter Ganong, Harvard University; Jeffrey B. Liebman, Harvard University, and NBER. “Approximately 1-in-7 people and 1-in-4 children received benefits from the U.S. Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) in July 2011, both all-time highs. We analyze changes in SNAP take-up over the past two decades. From 1994 to 2001, coincident… Continue Reading

What will happen if Congress fails to enact a Continuing Resolution by October 1, 2013

The Atlantic – The Odd Story of the Law That Dictates How Government Shutdowns Work, by Andrew Cohen “If rogue Republicans do not relent over the budget impasse by October 1, whatever pandemonium happens next will largely be governed by a federal statute you likely have never heard of: the Antideficiency Act. You can call… Continue Reading

Bing.com redesigned

A New Interface: a Modern Bing.com: “With this release we’ve created a modern Bing.com experience – one that is faster, cleaner and more visually appealing. We believe that search can be beautiful as well as functional and efficient. With that as our goal, we evaluated fonts, spacing, color, visual scan patterns, the search box and… Continue Reading

Google Alters Search to Handle More Complex Queries

New York Times – By Claire Cain Miller “Amit Singhal, senior vice president of search at Google, introduced the Hummingbird search algorithm at the garage in Menlo Park, Calif., where the company was founded 15 years ago. Google on Thursday announced one of the biggest changes to its search engine, a rewriting of its algorithm to handle… Continue Reading

Altering Attention in Adjudication

Altering Attention in Adjudication – Jeffrey J. Rachlinski, Cornell Law School; Andrew J. Wistrich, California Central District Court; Chris Guthrie, Vanderbilt University – Law School. September 27, 2013. UCLA Law Review, Vol. 60, No. 1586, 2013. “Judges decide complex cases in rapid succession but are limited by cognitive constraints. Consequently judges cannot allocate equal attention… Continue Reading

Latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Report

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report – Twelfth Session of Working Group I – Approved Summary for Policymakers. IPCC WGI AR5 SPM-2 27. September 2013 Working Group I Contribution to the IPCC Fifth Assessment -Report Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis. Summary for Policymakers – A. Introduction “The Working Group I contribution to the… Continue Reading

NYT Reports – NSA maps some Americans’ social connections

Via cnet – “Facebook, Google, and other tech firms apparently aren’t the only ones who’ve been fascinated by the potential of “social graphs” — maps of people’s social connections. The NSA has reportedly been tapping its giant repositories of phone and e-mail data to create complex diagrams of some Americans’ interactions, including lists of associates… Continue Reading