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

Daily Archives: September 9, 2019

This Map Lets You Plug in Your Address to See How It’s Changed Over the Past 750 Million Years

Smithsonian Magazine – The interactive tool enables users to home in on a specific location and visualize how it has evolved between the Cryogenian Period and the present

Ancient Earth, the tool behind this millennia-spanning visualization, is the brainchild of Ian Webster, curator of the world’s largest digital dinosaur database. As Michael D’estries reports for Mother Nature Network, Webster drew on data from the PALEOMAP Project—spearheaded by paleogeographer Christopher Scotese, the initiative tracks the evolving “distribution of land and sea” over the past 1,100 million years—to build the map. Users can input a specific address or more generalized region, such as a state or country, and then choose a date ranging from zero to 750 million years ago. Currently, the map offers 26 timeline options, traveling back from the present to the Cryogenian Period at intervals of 15 to 150 million years…”

If you asked Equifax for $125, you need to update your request

Follow up to previous posting – Equifax data breach settlement: How to file a claim for $125 or free credit reporting – see The Verge – “If you requested money from Equifax for leaking your personal data, you’ll need to provide more information by October 15th. The Equifax settlement administrator sent an email with details… Continue Reading

JPMorgan Creates ‘Volfefe’ Index to Track Trump Tweet Impact

Bloomberg – “Two of the largest Wall Street banks are trying to measure the market impact of Donald Trump’s tweets. Analysts at JPMorgan Chase & Co. have created an index to quantify what they say are the growing effects on U.S. bond yields. Citigroup Inc.’s foreign exchange team, meanwhile, report that these micro-blogging missives are… Continue Reading

Appeals court rules web scraping doesn’t violate anti-hacking law

arstechnica: “Scraping a public website without the approval of the website’s owner isn’t a violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, an appeals court ruled on Monday. The ruling comes in a legal battle that pits Microsoft-owned LinkedIn against a small data-analytics company called hiQ Labs. HiQ scrapes data from the public profiles of… Continue Reading

Automatic for the People

American Libraries – Are self-service libraries a threat to the profession or an opportunity to better serve patrons? – “Automated and self-service libraries—which have been popular in Europe for years—are gaining a foothold in the US. Will these services eliminate librarian jobs, or are they a cost-effective way to stretch budgets and provide basic services… Continue Reading